


The Butterfly Effect

by adirtyspoon



Category: She-Ra and the Princesses of Power (2018)
Genre: AU, Angst, Canon Divergence, F/F, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Shadow Weaver is like kind of a raging transphobe in this one, adora's as fucked up as catra is this time, catradora, if you don't like it you can eat my ass, trans girl catra, trans!Catra, trans!bow
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-08-29
Updated: 2020-11-18
Packaged: 2021-03-06 22:20:56
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 19
Words: 63,173
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26176360
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/adirtyspoon/pseuds/adirtyspoon
Summary: By which small changes in initial conditions can lead to large-scale and unpredictable variation in the future state of the system. (S1E9 AU)Alternatively, I don't know how to title fanfics...When Shadow Weaver erases Adora's memory and brings her back to the Horde, telling her she had been imprisoned and tortured by the Princesses for months, she and Catra drift closer than ever before. Unable to shake the feeling that something is missing, Adora embarks on a journey to rediscover her lost time, challenging her confusing relationship with Catra and forcing her to decide for herself just what her place in the world is.
Relationships: Adora/Catra (She-Ra), Entrapta/Hordak (She-Ra)
Comments: 145
Kudos: 204





	1. Introduction

**A/N: Woah hey guys! Thank you for checking out my fanfic! I'm still kinda new to this whole writing a story thing, so if anybody has feedback or advice I would totally not turn it down! Thank you all so much for checking this out, and I really hope you like it. If anyone's interested in me posting a link to a fic playlist, or setting up a discord server where we can all hang out, please feel free to reach out and say so!! That said, I really, really hope you enjoy! Thanks for reading this little blurb!**

* * *

“We will bring you home. I will erase your memory of everything prior to your defection. You will rejoin me, and you will be obedient. We will be a family again,” Shadow Weaver’s voice was no longer a source of comfort, and the threat of becoming a Horde puppet once more sent Adora over the edge.

The blonde struggled against the restraints, bucking and rocking against the cold steel she was pinned to. To her side and just behind, Glimmer shouted, bound and helpless. Vainly, she attempted to teleport out of her confinement, and was tortured for every attempt to escape. Adora glared at the dark sorceress defiantly.

“All my life you taught me we were fighting to free Etheria, to destroy the evils of magic and restore order. That the Princesses were evil, that Hordak would bring peace to all of us. You promised me that I could do great things, that we could make the world _right._

“Is this what freedom looks like, Shadow Weaver? Bodies in the streets, torturing _children,_ destroying lives and families? Taking choice from everybody? You’re a liar, a fraud!”

Adora was snarling, sobbing, spitting. Her eyes shone blue fire, her voice was saturated with venom. Catra stood at Shadow Weaver’s side, her eyes darted back and forth between the imprisoned Adora and the old sorcerer’s back. Glimmer cried out, pulling at her restraints and rubbing her chapped skin.

Sores opened again as she squirmed, and Catra caught the scent of the iron mixing in the humid, ozone rich air. Adora cried out.

“Catra, please, don’t let her do this to me! I’m sorry for leaving you, it’s not too late. You can still come with us, with me. Away from all of this! I know this isn’t you.”

The magicat was silent, all twitching ears and conflicted stares, looking to the far corner of the dark magician’s chamber. 

Adora’s voice wavers “The Horde lied to us all our lives.”

“You think I didn’t know?” She scoffs, wrinkling her nose and tossing the blonde a sideways smile. “Not everybody is naive as you, Adora.”

“Your grasp of the obvious never fails to impress,” the sorceress quipped dryly, “leave us. I have no further use for you.”

“But-”

“You know what I have said, now _do as I tell you._ ” 

Catra hissed quietly, uttered a soft ‘whatever’ and left, closing the door to Shadow Weaver’s chamber behind her.

The darkness was near complete, the only light present was the ghastly crimson glow of the Garnet and the bolts of red electricity occasionally needling Glimmer. Adora squared her jaw, set her shoulders and looked defiantly into the dark. She takes a shaky breath.

Her voice wavers in her throat, “you won’t get away with this. We’ll find a way to stop you.”

“You had better do that within the next five minutes, darling.” Shadow Weaver laughs cruelly, approaching the Black Garnet, reverently laying her hands against the Runestone. Adora’s bravado falters as she looks behind her, cheek pressed against the cold metal of her stretcher. Tears sting at her eyes and a knot wells up in her throat.

“Glimmer,” she sniffled, “I’m so, so, _so_ sorry.”

“No, Adora, it’s all my fau-”

The red bindings around her crackle like drywood, squeal and roar, shocking Glimmer and freezing her apology in its track. Blazing prickles of agony blossomed across every axon of every nerve; her blood was a feverish broil inside of her, bones brittle glass shards. 

The Black Garnet glowed, and the bolts coursing from the chains and rope restraining her matched its blood red hue. Glimmer’s skin shifted to match the crimsons and maroons. As she instinctively, frantically tried to teleport away the Garnet steadily grew brighter. 

_She’s a wild animal in a net_ , the epiphany strikes and Adora is reminded of the first lesson she and Catra had learned, years and years ago. When they were young, Catra and Adora made a habit of tormenting Force Captain Octavia. When Shadow Weaver had caught wind of it and placed the blame on her youngest and newest charge, the still unnamed magicat. When Adora had tried to confess to her own part in it, she had contradicted Shadow Weaver. And for that both of them had been struck. That was the first time.

_Anyone who resists her will just be hurt worse._

“Glimmer! Stop, just be still. It’ll only make it worse!”

Shadow Weaver stalked her way to the cot, reached out to pet Adora. The blonde snarled and jerked away from the hand. 

“You’d think by now you’d know to take your own advice,” the sorceress tisked disapprovingly.

The old woman grabbed a fistfull of Adora’s hair, tangling her gnarled hand and harshly jerking her by it, raising a hand to strike her. Adora stared unblinkingly at the woman, her eyes were ice cold, and she strained against the table’s clamps. The sound of skin clashing against skin filled the chamber. Adora cried out as the sorceress’s laugh, rich and dark as oil slick, reverberated against the cold steel walls. The crone waved two fingers in the air, and Glimmer groaned in relief as the shocks dissipated. 

Shadow Weaver relaxed her grip on the fistful of blonde hair, and ran her fingers gently through the locks in a cruel parody of motherly love. Adora’s breath hitched and snagged as she cried softly, and Glimmer whimpered and gagged, half delirious from the pain. 

The darkness in the room grew thicker, heavier, and stickier as the masked woman hummed softly, cooed and tenderly fawned over Adora.

“Stay still, both of you, you should know you'll only make this harder on yourselves, and only have one another to blame for it. You don’t want to make me hurt her - do you, Adora?”

Adora’s sobs quieted to sniffles, and she nodded quietly. 

Shadow Weaver slinks behind Glimmer, twisting around her, bending low and dipping her head a hair’s breadth away from the Princess’s ears.

“And I just know you don’t want to misbehave and make me hurt her, right?” Shadow Weaver’s voice is saccharine, oversincere and deceptively warm. Glimmer’s chest quivers, breath hitching in her mouth. 

The Princess shakes her head, murmuring quiet and incomprehensible. Adora’s tears carve clean rivulets down her sooty face as she comes back to the simple truth she had always known.

_There’s no getting out of this_ .. _Just like every time before. The sword doesn’t make a difference. My friends don’t make a difference. The Horde is all there is. Catra is right. I should have stayed with her. Maybe this time… I’ll have the sense to just stay with her, look out for each other and wait until we can call the shots._

Shadow Weaver ran her thumb across Adora’s cheek, wiping away one of the tears that trickled down it. 

“There, there now. As soon as you wake up, I’m sure you will be more than happy to see our prisoner. Perhaps, if you beg enough, I will let _you_ oversee her interrogation, my dear.” Her voice was half song, and Adora could feel the sorceress’s glee as she began tracing the runes that would erase her memory. 

Sleep was sounding better and better by the moment, and Glimmer’s cries weren’t so loud if Adora closed her eyes. 

* * *

_There was a horse, and a sword. She was with Princesses, and she was one too._

_‘How was I supposed to know being a Princess was contagious?’_

_‘I know you’re not a bad person, Catra, come with me.. We can fix this!’_

_‘I didn’t know the Horde was really doing something this awful. They told us we were fighting to free Etheria.’_

_‘For the Honor of Grayskull!’_

_Madame Razz. The Sword, The Whispering Woods. She-Ra._

_She had to wake up. She couldn’t forget._

* * *

Adora woke from her fitfil rest with a start and heard the sobbing behind her. She craned her neck, pressing the sides of her head against cold metal to glance back at… 

Who was that? She struggled to remember.

The girl looked up from where she was tied down, and her eyes twinkled with emotion.

  
“Adora..” her voice was cracked and rough, like she had been screaming and for hours (had she been there for hours?). “Do you remember me?”

There was a prolonged silence, broken only by the steady drone of the Black Garnet, as the blonde struggled to recall something. Anything. 

A name came back to her.

“Glimmer…? How did we get here? What’s going on?” There was something she was forgetting. Something important, if she could just remember. 

What did she have to remember?

“Hush, darling. It’s almost over. Go back to sleep.” A comforting voice lilted through the darkness. Red lightning crackled and the girl - Glitter, was it? - cried out. 

“Sh-Shadow Wea-ver?” 

“That’s right sweetheart,” the voice cooed, “just go back to bed. Everything will be perfect again, soon.”

Nails scratched at the door to the sanctum, and Adora could have sworn she heard Catra’s voice begging the sorceress to stop. 

“Is that… Catra?” She slurred, drowsily blinking her eyes. 

The girl behind her (was she supposed to know her?) was flickering in and out of existence? She kept flickering in and out of her bindings.

Shadow Weaver’s eyes narrowed behind her mask, and the room took on an even deeper maroon hue. The girl screamed louder and louder, until Adora thought her throat would burst. The girl disappeared again, and suddenly reappeared behind Shadow Weaver, fists high above her head as she bore downward. The dark magician turned, raising her hands and attacking the girl.

_That’s strange, she can teleport._ Adora laughed absently, drifting back to sleep.

* * *

_The acrid stench of immolated flesh. The roaring fires, consuming the homes of the townspeople, burned so hot Adora could swear her skin would crack open and her blood would blister. She looked down at her hands, dirtied and bloody. Pale green lasers whizzed past her head, and Horde soldiers brought civilians, shackled and in neat lines, to the outskirts of the town and summarily executed them. She had ran past the piles of bodies to reach the heart of Thaymour, to tell them it was all a misunderstanding._

_She looked up, stared down the barrel of a tank._

So this is what it’s like before you die, _she thought blankly._

_The hatch opened up, and Catra stepped out. She breathed in pungent death, and smiled. Her lips were rimmed with blood, her eyes were savage. She pounced on Adora._

_The Sword. Grayskull. Rebellion._

* * *

She snapped awake, breath catching in her throat as she coughed hoarsely. Her head was killing her. That was the first thing Adora realized. Like someone had pressurized the inside of her skull with an air pump and lined her scalp in omnidirectional needles. Any second now she expected to hear the _pop_. 

_Or,_ she thought a pregnant moment later, _at least anything at all._

Her tongue was lolling outside of her mouth and she could taste the ozone, could feel the humid static in the air. She realized she had to have been in Shadow Weaver’s quarters. She opened her mouth to speak, pausing in stupor as her voice, garbled and muffled, hummed in her own head. She still couldn’t hear.

The dull ringing in her ears began to fade as she mutely wondered what happened this time. She combed through her memories, reviewing what had happened before then. 

_A skiff.. Catra… we crashed!_

Her eyes snapped open, and she recoiled at the sight of the presence in front of her, shouting and squirming. She was strapped to a table, unable to move. And in front of her was a _Princess._

“Catra, help me!” 

She heard the scratching of nails against the sanctum’s large door, Catra’s muffled voice worked its way past the metal barriers. She hissed as the Princess advanced on her, snapping her focus back to her apparent captor.

“-ra? Adora!” The Princess shouted at her, and a bolt of cold terror ran down the pit of her stomach.

 _The Princess knew her name_.

“Who are you? What’s going on? How do you know my name? Catra!” She struggled at her restraints, looking down at her hands and the ground below -

_oh no._

Shadow Weaver was on the floor, motionless save for her shallow breathing. Adora’s own air hitched in a ragged gasp, catching in her throat as she fought against the restraints hysterically. The back of her mouth burned with the familiar, bitter taste of bile and hot tears stung the backs of her eyes. 

The clanging staccato of her own body striking the steel berth as she snarled and rocked herself back and forth on the berth drowned out whatever the Princess in front of her was trying to say. Adora was wild eyed and animalistic, spitting and shaking and bellowing for help.

The Princess reached a hand toward her, and she hissed and desperately recoiled.

“ _Don’t touch me,_ ” she roared. “Catra! Catra! Help me, please! Don’t let her get me!”

Adora heard her padding footfalls growing fainter in the hallway - _Catra was walking away! -_ her eyes locked onto the door, and babbling, decoherent and garbled filled the space within the chamber. The Princess spoke indistinctly, hardly audible over the sound of the blonde’s panicked sobs. 

“Catra! She’s got me, she’s going to take me away! Don’t leave me!” The jagged edges of her breath hitched on the off syllable of every word as Adora frantically shouted and cried, beating herself against the steel cot. She was a caged thing, bashing herself against the ties and restraints, the cold steel of the bed. She bit her tongue in her mouth until she tasted blood, and redoubled her frantic struggles to get free.

“Adora, _please,_ listen to me! I’m your friend, Glimmer! We have _got_ to get out of here!” She waved her hands desperately, and reached back toward the blonde.

Adora screamed bloody murder as the Princesses’s hands closed around her shoulders, and tears openly streamed down her face. She spat on the figure’s face, staining it with the dark blood covering her mouth. 

“Adora, please! Don’t you remember? Please!” The Princess was shaking her, and her head banged on the backing of the table. The blonde howled like a wild cornered animal, full of pain and helpless rage as her enemy handled her.

One of the grates in the ceiling gave way, clanging to the ground. Two luminous eyes, blue and yellow, glowed in the darkness above the chamber.

Catra was here!

For a perfect instant Catra was still, a dark shadow silhouetted by the halo of light streaming into the pitch black room, poised for an attack. Suddenly, in a flash of claws and yowls and a burst of wind, Catra was on the Princess, literally _on_ the Princess.

She was balanced across the girl’s shoulders, bashing her across the head with her fists, yanking her hair, hissing and spitting as the redhead’s knees buckled. The Princess was shouting and flailing, losing her balance. Catra leaped high as Adora’s assailant lost her footing, pushing off neatly as the Princess went tumbling across the chamber. Adora watched helplessly, it was all she could do.

The Princess - _Glimmer_ \- was prone, bracing herself on her forearms as she looked up, tears streaming down her face. 

“I’m so sorry, Ado-” A clawed hand clamped around her mouth, and the clawed ends of Catra’s toes found themselves embedded in the Princess’s back, just under the shoulders. 

Catra was predatory grace and deadly beauty, a specter of umbral rage as she bent low. She tangled her hands in the redhead’s hair, yanked the Princesses’s head upward and digging her foot deeper into the girl’s back as she cried out in pain. 

“You’ve done enough. You don’t deserve to speak her name.” Catra’s voice was low, sparkling with violence as ferocious as the glow of her eyes in the darkness. Her eyes flickered up, and Adora followed their gaze back to the motionless form of Shadow Weaver.

Quickly, Catra stood, savagely raking her claws across the Princesses’s back as she padded backward, surveying her work smugly. The girl screamed and wriggled on the ground underneath her, bleeding and crying. Her hands balled into fists and her wounded, tear filled eyes locked with Adora’s. She was repeating something that the blonde couldn’t quite understand, her voice was blown out by her pain and the erratic seesaw of her breath.

_I’ll come back for you_ , Adora realizes she is saying, _I promise._

Catra roared and swiped a killing blow at Glimmer’s form, only to sink her claws deep into the cold steel flooring of Shadow Weaver’s sanctum. The Princess was gone.

She had disappeared with an agonizing scream and a burst of electric red.

Adora stared blankly at the space she had laid, confused. There was something she was forgetting.

* * *

_A sword, a bow, Glimmer._

_Grayskull. The Whispering Woods._

_An old woman peering up into her eyes and smiling, ‘Mara dearie. I have waited so long for you!’_

_Burning bodies, dead children, the tanks at Thaymour._

* * *

“Hey, Adora?”

Catra’s voice cut through the darkness, and Adora locked eyes with her. Adora whimpered as the restraints around her were cut loose, and she sunk gratefully into the waiting arms of the girl in front of her.

“Catra, what happened.. to me? How did she know my name? Is Shadow Weaver okay?”

Catra stiffened, and her breath caught in her throat.

“You were kidnapped after you crashed the skiff, and that Princess,” Catra paused, she was getting worked up. She took a deep breath, “that Princess took you. Shadow Weaver and I had to fight to rescue you, to get you back. But you’re safe now.”

Catra swallowed thickly, “Shadow Weaver will be fine. The Princess must have knocked her out. Serves her right for turning her back on someone like that.” 

Adora laughed softly, and Catra joined in.

She smiles, kneading her hands against the blonde’s sides as she purrs, “you’re back.”

“My head is killing me,” she whispered hoarsely. “And I definitely didn’t crash the skiff.”

The magicat wrapped her arms around Adora, breathing in her smell and sighing in relief. Adora was back. Her heart twists bittersweetly in her chest, and a knot ties itself neatly in her throat.

“That’s up for debate,” she breathes softly. 

Catra clears her throat and nuzzles into the crook of the blonde’s shoulders. Shaky arms thread themselves behind her and the girls’ world settles into a comfortable, beautiful peace for that instant.


	2. Drinking on the Rooftop

**A/N: This turned out a little shorter than I'd have liked, but I was hoping to write some cute little Catradora fluff. I think the next chapter will probably pick up right around where this one left off, but for now I just wanted to get a second update out as quick as possible. Thank you for leaving a comment, PwiPwipPoo, as it really made my day! In case anyone is interested, I'll include the link to my catra playlist right here![The playlist link!](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/3dmXe9dvYNbQ1xstPTTOqS?si=-pYyW3zMS7KgdD0wwyo7fA)**

* * *

After the events in the Black Garnet Chamber that night, word had broken out that Adora had returned, kidnapped at the hands of scheming Princess looking to make an example of a young Force Captain-to-be. Catra had made a name for herself, single handedly repelling the attack and forcing the Princesses out of the Horde’s domain, rescuing Adora in the process. 

After the skirmish in Shadow Weaver’s personal chamber, in the small hours of the predawn, the magicat had brought both the sorceress and Adora to the infirmary. And when the blonde had refused treatment, Catra had foolishly promised the physicians to patch the blonde up herself, and Adora had murmured something that sounded suspiciously like ‘just try,’ and huffed irritably.

_It’s not like it matters,_ Catra had thought, _I can take her._

Those proved to be famous last words; despite her own formidable strength and speed, attributes magicats were renowned for, she had proved no match for the wounded blonde. Adora (even a wounded Adora) had the irritating ability to wriggle out of nearly any grapple Catra could yank her into; and, much to the magicat’s ire, an affinity to retaliate by pinning her down. This instance had proved just as ineffective as all its predecessors.

Adora - bruised and battered, caked in dried blood - had sidestepped Catra’s swift pounce once they had entered their shared quarters. She had effortlessly stepped to the side, kicked a foot out, wrapped her arms around Catra, and deliberately brought her to the floor, pinning beneath her athletic, well muscled form. Adora smiled cockily, snaking an arm out from Catra’s waist, wrapping her strong hands around the magicat’s wrists, pulling them high above their heads.

Adora’s powerful legs had braced against the inside of her hips. The magicat would huff, ears twitching in annoyance, growling and biting and shaking herself back and forth. Adora would press herself down further, bruising the magicat’s toned thighs and laughing at the other girl’s indignant squeals. Catra bit at Adora’s arms, twisted and shimmied under her. Finally, she realized it was futile and gave up with a sigh.

“So, Catra…” Adora’s voice was velvet smooth and soft. “What were you doing trying to pin me down?”

The blonde was _purring,_ and Catra was finding it difficult to avoid joining her. She squeezed her eyes shut, ignored the strange heat behind her cheeks, and cleared her throat.

“Wha-” her voice sounded too husky and soft, and the lights in the ceiling were too harsh. Catra’s ears dropped low to the sides of her head, and she shrunk under Adora’s shadow, glaring. “Why do you _think,_ dummy? I just said I was going to patch you up myself, since you’re too stupid to let anybody at the infirmary do it for you!” 

The blonde’s smile was shitheaded, smug and utterly _impossible_ to look away from. Adora’s tongue darted from the side of her mouth, and she licked at the still-bleeding welt on the corner of one of her lips. Catra squirmed again beneath her, barely avoiding keening as her captor’s knees dug into the tenderness of her inner thigh.

“You know I could just do it myself, Catra. I have before,” she paused, sighing. Her breath tickled across Catra’s hair, “could it be that-”

“No! It is _not_ because I like you,” the magicat hissed, squirming under the blonde’s grasp anew, “I know that you’d just miss some of the spots. And you wouldn’t be able to stitch everything on your back as neatly as I could.”

“Yeah? Then why do you care, kitten?”

Catra’s cheeks took on a scarlet color and she growled, staring into Adora’s ice blue eyes defiantly. “Don’t call me that! _I am not a child!”_

“I just…” she looked off to the side of the room, studying the wall. Her left ear twitched, and her voice was quiet when she spoke again, “I thought you left me. I just… wanna make sure you’re really okay is all.”

Adora’s reassuring weight lifted, and Catra stopped herself from reaching out to pull her back down. She moved to straighten herself, and found Adora’s outstretched hand, slipping hers over it and accepting the help up.

“In that case,” the blonde giggled, pressing her forehead against Catra’s, “I guess I should let you get to work.”

The blonde turned around, kicking off her boots and stripping in comfortable silence as Catra busied herself grabbing the first aid kit they stashed under the bed. 

“Hey, Adora? I, uh…” Catra licked her lips, grabbing the first aid kid and nervously drumming her fingers against it. “I know how hard it is for you to let others help you. So, uh… Thanks, I guess. I found a bottle of Octavia’s rum while you were gone. Once we’re done here, after we nap, we can go to the top of the spire and split if, if you wanted.”

  
“I would love to!” Adora’s laugh tinkled like the sound of screws rolling across the floor. Jealousy flittered at Catra’s heart as she wondered if the archer and Princess had seen any bit of the Adora that was meant only for her, the one giggling and smiling without a care in the world.

“Okay, now this will sting a bit. Get ready!” The girls each took a deep breath in and held it as Catra sprayed the first wound with rubbing alcohol.

* * *

The early dusk had settled in the Fright Zone, and the neon oranges and browns of the sooty sky had softened. Rust colored light, ambient and warm, washed out the harsh architecture and halogenic light of the sprawling city-fortress. Two figures, silhouetted by a pink sun seated low and dipping lower still against the horizon, sat pressed to each other. The shadows, girls, were perched on a maintenance walkway at the peak of the tallest spire in the stronghold, arms tangled together and legs draped across the edge. One of them, a blonde, hiccupped loudly and the two erupted into fits of laughter. 

Adora’s arm was wrapped around Catra’s shoulders, and the girl’s well muscled frame was covered in a pockmark of stitches, bandages, and bruises. The magicat was nestling into the crook of her arm, purring as she traced her finger across a bottle of liquor. 

“So…” Catra’s voice was uncharacteristically soft, and she pressed herself closer to the girl next to her, “have you ever drank before?”

“Um… Once. Shadow Weaver toasted my promotion last week just before we talked, actually.” The shy admission caught Catra off guard.

“Last week, huh? Try two and a half months.” Catra couldn’t stop the derisive laugh from escaping her lips.

Adora sagged beside the magicat, “ _Two and a half months_.... I can’t believe I left you here all alone for so long. I never should have stolen that skiff; Catra, I am so sorry.”

Catra ran her fingers around the lip of the bottle, cutting away the seal and unscrewing the cap in a practiced, easy movement. She sniffed the rum appraisingly, coughed at the sharp odor, and took a hearty swig. 

Catra hissed and turned away. “You’re such an idiot.” Her voice was rough from the burn of the alcohol when she faced Adora again, thrusting the bottle into her hands. ‘

“Drink.”

Adora took a sip and her face wrinkled in distaste. She sputtered and hacked, groaning.

“How can you - ack! -” she coughed, “possibly drink that stuff? It tastes as bad as the disinfectant smells!”

Catra took the bottle back from Adora, taking a few deep gulps of the acrid liquid, grunting. 

“I was cold without you. This kept me warm when blankets wouldn’t.

“I thought you were gone. Really gone, Adora. That you had left me and would never come back. That you’d do something stupid and get yourself killed, or _worse_ … I was so afraid you would have been their plaything, that they’d twist you into joining them. That you’d walk away from _me_ like I was nothing.

“And the thought of a life without waking up next to you? I - I wanted to _destroy_ anyone who took you from me.”

Adora’s arms wrapped tight around Catra. Her hands were crossed in her lap, still holding the bottle as the blonde rocked them back and forth. Her hands cupped Catra’s cheek, and her lips planted little kisses across the girl’s head. Catra smiled, hesitant and slow as she nuzzled into the girl, rubbing the side of her head against the dip in the girl’s collarbones.

“I’m here now, kitten. I’ve got you. I’m not going to let you go again. I promise you that.”

“You can’t possibly know that. I know you better than that. I know -”

“You know that we’re best friends, that we promised to look out for each other forever and ever, to put each other first.

“That I care more about you than anybody or anything else in the world, Catra. Please trust me.”

Catra was silent, and when she closed her eyes she could still see She-Ra’s piercing, luminous glare cutting through the smoke at Thaymour, the way she had destroyed everything and chosen Etheria - literally _anything on Etheria_ \- and a couple of people she had met mere hours ago over the life they had promised to build together. She would have put anything else in the world over Catra, the girl she had promised would always be at the center of her life. And Catra knew deep down that it was only a matter of time until Adora left her again, for good.

She curled in on herself, ears low to the sides of her head. Her tail curled absently around one of her ankles, and she kicked her bare feet back and forth off the edge of the spire. Adora took another few swigs from the bottle, then a deep breath. Her voice cut the silence again.

“You’re the - hic - strongest person I know, Catra.”

“Huh?”

Adora’s voice was soft, and the consonants were just slightly slurred, “I mean it. It took real courage for you to come out to Shadow Weaver. She still hasn’t called you by your name since then. For you to be yourself the way you are. You two were never in a good place before, and it’s been worse ever since. But it makes you happy, so you do it anyway. No matter what anyone else says. You’re my inspiration. Doing what’s right for you no matter who disagrees or stands in your way. I always try to be a little more like you. You’re the most amazing girl I know.”

_Girl_. Describing herself like that still felt weird to Catra. Like stealing something from others. Like the latest example of an entire life she had spent in Adora’s shadow, trying to be just like her. The thought that Adora tried to emulate her in any way made her head spin.

“Well.. I’d known since we were around twelve or so anyways. I just… I couldn’t say anything until I was old enough to make my own decisions. We both know she’d have made my life even more of a living hell if she had any clue… She’s still trying to, even if she can’t control me the same way anymore.”

“I know. The way you waited, your patience and your willingness to do whatever it takes for you to be happy. It’s beautiful. You’re beautiful.”

Catra blushed and fidgeted at the blonde’s side. She reached out and took another few gulps of the liquor, sticking her tongue out and shaking her head at the bitter taste. 

“Yeah, Adora, sure. And you’re drunk.”

“Drunk confessions,” the girl hiccupped.

_Sober truths._

Catra picked at the tears in her pants, she was just buzzed enough to keep from recoiling as Adora started getting mushier. 

“I was always afraid I wouldn’t be able to… pass, you know. A lot of people don’t ever. And I thought with the… mane and all, that nobody would get that I’m a girl. I’m really lucky; magicats are rare enough most people don’t know only the males have hair like this.. It’s really nice when you… compliment me like that, I guess. So, thank you.”

“Anytime kitten. It’s almost been a year now. It’s crazy to think.”

“Well, Adora,” the magicat coughed delicately, passing her the bottle. “It’s been a little more than a year now. A month after your… capture… I hit the anniversary.”

“Catra, I’m so sorry! I promised to be there with you. I could have sworn - I’m so stupid!”

Catra shoved the bottle in Adora’s mouth, and the girl took another hearty swig. 

“That calm you down?”

The blonde nodded mutely.

“Good. It wasn’t all bad. I came up here for part of the day and drank.”

“I’m glad it was okay for the most part… Was that the day you scratched out the drawings of us?”

_Damn her perception_.

“I… no! Of course not, what kind of sap do you take me for? I didn’t even notice they got scratched out!”

Adora was silent, expectantly eying the magicat. She had her _I-know-you’re-bullshitting-me_ face on.

Catra sighed and acquiesced, “... fine, it was.”

“You heard me earlier, right? I won’t leave your side again. I promise.”

It was Catra’s turn to wear Adora’s trademarked face. She looked away, hiding the grimace from the blonde.

“You really hit a year on HRT… Without me. I just don’t understand…” 

“I told you that you were probably brain damaged after the skiff crashed, Adora.”

“You might be right,” she sounded bewildered and defeated when she spoke again. “Can I tell you something stupid?”

“Could I stop you if I tried?”

“Hah-hah. Funny, Catra.” Adora deadpanned, taking a breath.

“I feel like I’m missing time. The girl in the Garnet Chamber, that _Princess_ … She knew me. I keep seeing a sword, and you told me I was kidnapped and imprisoned by the Princesses, probably even tortured. For months. But I can’t remember anything in the space between. I abandoned you, and I can’t even remember why. If I can just find the sword then -”

“ _Then what?_ ” Catra was snapping, pulling herself away from the blonde and repositioning herself to sit on the far end of the spire’s ledge. “Then you’d leave to chase after whatever some sword shows you? Don’t be stupid, Adora. Who _cares_ what happened before? We have each other here. So please… stay.”

Adora hummed, reaching a hand across the divide between the two of them. “You’re right, Catra. I promise, I’ll stay with you no matter what.” 

The magicat’s hands reached across the gap slowly, deliberately threading her fingers between Adora’s. She scooted a hair’s breadth closer, and strong arms wrapped around her frame. The blonde pulled her closer still. Adora easily lifted Catra’s frame, despite the girl’s yelping protests, and gently placed her in her own lap. Her arms wrapped around the girl’s waist, and she scratched at the sweet spot behind the magicat’s left ear. 

“The bottle isn’t going to finish itself, Catra.” Adora’s voice was soft and low, her lips pressed up against Catra’s ear.

“Ah!” The magicat squealed, ears flitting, “that tickles!”


	3. Drunk Besties

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hey!! I was looking to make something a bit more lighthearted while pushing the story forward. I guess that means some Catradora fluff, and some other bits in here too! Thank you all so much for the comments and love, it makes this super duper rewarding! I love you guys uwu

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> PS: If you want drunk Catra and Adora snuggling in bed as part of next chapter, let me know and I'll make it happen ;)

“Adora and Entrapta? The Princess Alliance is as bad of an idea the second time as the first.” Mermista sighed dispassionately, “I’m going to go find Sea Hawk and make sure he didn’t burn our boat down, I guess. This totally sucks.”

“That’s fine! That’s totally fine, we didn’t need her anyways, right? We can still go back, if we can just get the sword to Adora -”

“I don’t know, Bow… Without Entrapta, Mermista, and She-Ra, it doesn’t seem like we stand much of a chance. But I know the Horde’s evil actions will be repaid eventually. Just not by us, not now.” 

Perfuma offered the archer and Glimmer a sad smile. She gently wrapped her arms around Bow, hugging him before moving on to the redheaded Princess. She pulled her into an embrace; one Glimmer did not return. 

“I’m so sorry. Maybe she’ll come to her senses eventually, but for now I need to go back to my kingdom. The Horde will reinvade us soon, and I need to make sure my people have left before that happens. I know you must be going through a lot. Once we find where to go, if you ever want to come see me to talk about it, I would love to listen. In the meantime, take this.”

The blonde pulled away and gently clasped her hands together. When she pulled them apart a pink flower had grown between the two of them. Cupping it between her hands, Perfuma offered the flower to the smaller girl, who growled.

“This,” she snarled, crushing the flower between her fingers, tearing the petals apart and stepping away from the other girl, “is the most _useless_ thing you could possibly do! We lost not one, but two princesses! The alliance has been disbanded, _She-Ra is gone,_ and you’re offering me a flower?!” 

Glimmer’s voice was shrill as she paced back and forth. “You’re asking if I want to _talk about it?_ Talking will not save Etheria, Perfuma! I am going to bring Adora back, and we are going to destroy the Horde! Take your stupid flowers and your pascificism and get out of my sight!” 

“Oh… That was incredibly rude. I’ll be here when you’re ready to apologize, and I wish you the best in your quest to save She-Ra.” Perfuma’s eyes were wide with shock, and swimming in tears. She turned on her heel and ran from the room.

“Glimmer…” Bow shook his head in disappointment, opened his mouth as if to say something, and then left the room. 

Alone, Glimmer roared. She turned on a heel and beat her fists against the wall, throwing wild punches and swearing. 

The Princess cried out in helpless rage and pain. She shook her hands and ran her fingers over her cracked and bleeding knuckles delicately, keening low. She braced her back against the wall she had just struck, sliding down it and toward the cold floor.

“I was supposed to be better than this,” she whimpered, alone inside the War Room. “There’s no hope for Etheria if I can’t get everybody to work together.” 

* * *

Catra and Adora were giddy-drunk as they made their descent from the spire, clumsily stumbling over one another and narrowly avoiding deadly falls.

  
“You know - hic! - this probably - hic! -” Adora paused, dropping on all fours and crawling through the narrow space between the pipes on the side of the skyscraper. 

“Mayyyy-be we - hic! - should have gotten druunk not so uh… - hic! - not so high up.” To emphasize her point, the blonde gestured wildly to her right side, where the precious footing she and Catra were currently perched on vanished into a steep drop.

“Aww, is somebody afraid of falling~?” Catra’s voice was slurred, and her inflection made her sound like she was half-singing. “I promise I’d save you, _kitten_.”

“Hey - what?! I… you…” Adora was flustered, she only ever stuttered like that when she was caught off guard. “ _That’s what I call you!_ You can’t call me your own nickname!”

Catra laughed, a high and breathy sound that filled the blonde’s chest with a peculiar warmth. She stopped crawling forward, and Adora nearly ran headfirst into her ass. The blonde’s mouth went dry as the other girl looked over her shoulder, smiling slyly.

_Has Catra’s ass always looked like that?_ Adora’s face washed a deep red, and the magicat’s smug expression intensified. 

“I think I will if it makes you blush like that,” she purred, winking over her shoulder at her companion before beginning to crawl through the narrow clearances between the steel jungle of the spire. 

This girl was going to be the death of her, Adora decided, following along.

The minutes passed by in quiet, and the ground below them grew steadily closer. The cramped maintenance ladders, narrow hallways, and miniature size vents had widened considerably. Adora and Catra were walking side by side along fire escapes, their knuckles brushed against each other as they took flights of stairs back toward the earth. They hadn’t quite finished the bottle earlier, and Catra held it in her off hand, taking occasional sips before passing it Adora’s way. They kept drinking like that, half touching another in the darkness, blanketed in the comfortable silence and intimacy of each other’s presence. 

“So Catra, um, I was wonderin’ if - hic! - we could sleep together tonight. Like, if that is… okay with you and… - hic! - stuff.”

“Adora! Don’t!” Catra yelped, swatting at the blonde’s arm and squealing. “Don’t say it like that, you idiot! We are _not_ sleeping together!”

“Okay, okay, sorry! I just -”

“But!” she interrupted, “we can still share a bed with one another.”

“Awww! I kne... I knew you liked me, kitten!” Adora giggled and snorted, wrapping her arm around the other girl’s waist.

Catra tensed up, blushing. Her heart was pounding in her chest, and her stomach was twisting in dizzying knots. Her knees were shaky and her steps faltered. She leaned further into the blonde, hugging her arms across her chest, bottle between the two of them.

“I’m not a kitten..” She grumbled, wrinkling her nose.

“So you admit you like me!”

“What? No! I do not _like_ you!”

“Well, you didn’t - hic! - contest it before. It was all… all ‘I’m not a kitten this!’”

Catra pulled away from the blonde, but Adora dug her fingertips into her side, pressing against her ribs the way she _knew_ the magicat hated. The girl yelped, pulling away from the offending digits and pushing herself that much closer to Adora. 

“Look at that, snuggling into me. You really do have it bad, don’t you!” Adora wiggled her eyebrows, digging her fingers deeper into Catra’s side, forcing her even closer to her.

“That is so embarr-rr-rrassinng for - hic! - you.”

“Ah! Hey, Adoraaa!” Her voice was squeaky with indignation and she was growling. “Watch it!” Catra bristled, shoving Adora roughly with her shoulder. “You better ease up, I don’t have any issues with body slamming an invalid, you know.”

“Yeahhh, pfffhahaha,” she was snorting again, and Catra’s heart skipped in her chest. “Cause that just worked out soooo - hic! - well for you in the barracks, riight?”

“Well, I… didn’t want to hurt you then.”

“But you do now?” Adora took another swig from the bottle.

Catra was getting huffy, “Yeah, of course I do now, dummy! You’re being a real thorn in my side!”

Adora’s laughter echoed against the steel as the girl’s legs gave out and she fell on her haunches, snorting and rocking back and forth.

“Are you good?”

Adora’s laughter did not diminish as she gasped, “I think… you mean…”

Her face was turning dark red, she was laughing even harder now, and the way she snorted made her sound like a wild animal, Catra decided.

“ _Thumb in your side~!_ ”

_THWACK_

Catra facepalmed herself so hard she left a welt. Adora’s laughter grew increasingly hysterical, she was kicking her legs as she shook in place.

“Ahh???? Ahhhh????

“It’s like a thorn…. But it isn’t! It’s a thumb!”

She was shrieking with laughter. Catra grabbed the back of her uniform’s collar, growling and pulling the blonde along behind her.

“Yeah, you’re a real comedic genius, loser. Come on, let’s get to bed.”

* * *

Entrapta had remained hidden in the vents for twenty-seven hours now. At first, she had been staying at the spire’s peak, as it seemed nobody came up there. When some… couple? Had come up there, laughing and drinking and wrestling, she had decided she would be discovered if she stayed there. Looking at her datapad, the inventor had quickly decided the Sanctum in the center of the city-fortress was the location to be. 

The energy emissions coming from that place, coupled with the bright flashes of light, had just been too intriguing to resist. The prospect of advanced technology that she had never seen before had her racing off in a beeline nearly instantaneously.

In retrospect, it may have been wiser to look before she leapt, although Entrapta would certainly never agree with that. The strange being inside the sanctuary was quite… _displeased_. Whatever he had been trying to accomplish obviously hadn’t paid off; and, judging by how feverishly he punched and kicked at the materials around him, he obviously lacked a scientist’s patience and willingness to accept failure. 

All around the edges of the room were vials filled with other, strange beings that wore the creature’s same face. The same dark eyes, vampirish fangs, gaunt cheekbones, and slender, long ears. Their hands and feet ended in five fearsome claws, and their bodies were toned and covered in soft white fur. 

“Hour twenty-seven in the Fright Zone. I appear to have stumbled upon some Horde cloning project. Potential applications are vast; ranging from restoration of damaged tissues, to potential transfer of consciousness from one vessel to another.” The Princess’s voice was hushed, and her prehensile hair, dangling in pigtails, clung to the sides of the air vent she had braced herself against.

Entrapta, intrigued, began a methodical infiltration of the laboratory, taking note of the readouts on the various technical displays. The scientist in the middle bellowed again, and a series of shattered, mangled, and generally twisted mechanical components flew omnidirectional hailstorms. The creature was _angry_. Entrapta stopped in her tracks, propped against the dark steel walls and the lip of an air vent. 

“Why won’t it work?!” He was bellowing, punctuating each word with the sharp whine of twisted metal.

“Experiment conductor seems to have some,” Entrapta giggled, “ _hangups_ operating within the scientific method.”

Entrapta’s laughter grew in volume, echoing against the walls of the Sanctum chamber and stopping the experiment conductor in his tracks. His red eyes widened in the darkness, and he growled. Oblivious, the Geek Princess continued laughing. She snorted, dancing in the air. 

“Who is there? Come out!” The creature snarled, his voice was a robust (and venomous) bass. He waved a hand into the darkness. A misshapen, winged baby flew from his shoulders, chanting distorted repetitions of the scientist’s imperative.

Unexpectedly, at least from the creature’s perspective, a Princess emerged from the shadows, clutching a notepad, pencil, and recorder in her hair. She was clad in welding overalls, with a face shield. In her hands she clutched a datapad, and a comprehensive set of satchels, pouches, and pockets held a number of tools. She was smiling shyly, looking up at the raging creature.

“Ummmm.. hi?”

“Who are you? What do you want?” He was snarling, and his blue hair was dishevelled. The baby circled around his legs, threading between them and glaring at her. Its yellow eyes were harsh, and its teeth, bared against its little mouth, were wickedly sharp. The corners of its mouth bled where the fangs sunk.

“I’m a scientist, like you! I can see you’re working on refining cloning technology, but while I was looking around your workspace I noticed you’ve been using uninsulated power cables to route energy to and from your tech! I think if you tried adding padding to them and routed them back to the machinery you should see an improvement! Are you trying to clone yourself? But why? The Horde seems to have no shortage of frontline soldiers, or -” she paused excitedly, gasping for breath, “ _bots_! I’ve been looking at the artificial intelligences of them and I’ve been making some improvements, actually!”

She whistled loudly, “Emily! Come here girl!” 

Hordak blinked, stunned into silence. This… this.. _interloper_ had not only the gall to invade his private sanctum, but the gall to tell him how to conduct his studies. He opened his mouth to speak, but was cowed back into bewildered quietude as one of his bots scampered into the room, rubbing up against the intruder and nuzzling her. The girl beamed and cackled, wrapping her arms around it. A strange warmth bloomed in Hordak’s chest. 

The Horde’s Leader scowled and snarled, “You dare to enter my personal laboratory, tell me how to conduct my experiments, and repurpose one of my own machines? Do you know who you stand before? I am Hordak, Supreme Commander of the Horde! ”

If the girl knew she was in danger, which seemed ever more vanishingly likely as their encounter progressed, grinned and nodded.

“Yes! That about sums it up! Wait right here, um… _Hordak_... I’m going to get some of my supplies to help fix your setup! I’ll be right back!”

Before he could so much as retort, much less threaten the safety of the girl in a more tangible manner that her feeble Etherian mind could handle, she was climbing through the vents above his laboratory. She shot him a look from over her shoulder. 

“I’m Entrapta, by the way!”

* * *

“Catraaaaaaaaa,” Adora was keening at the magicat. The bottle had been just about spent, and the two of them could hardly walk in a straight line. Arms wrapped around one another, leaning into each other, and alternately bracing against the right and left walls of the barracks as they staggered back and forth, the two of them made their way back to their shared quarters.

“Whaddyawan, ‘Dora?”

“You’re so,” she paused in a burst of giggles, snorting, “sooofffftt~!”

Emphasizing her point, the blonde brought her other hand to Catra’s stomach, rubbing it. She tangled her other hand in the soft, thick tufts of her mane. Unfortunately for them both, Adora’s hand had just been braced against the wall before she had elected to remove it. The two of them fell to the floor, a tangle of limbs and sounds. 

Catra yowled, squirming under the blonde’s weight - _why did she always end up on the bottom?_

“Urgh! Why is it every time you do something stupid I break your fall?”

The blonde giggled and snorted, and flashed her signature cocky grin. It’s a good thing they were already on the floor, or Catra’s knees may have given out.

“Heeeeey, Catraaa.”

“You are sucha idioh - hic! - id-i-ot. Thas my line!” Catra’s ears lay low to her head, and she was peering up at the blonde. A deep blush colored her cheeks, and he lips were slightly parted.

“You _hiccupped_! It’s so-ooooo~ cuuuutee!” 

“‘Snot! ‘Sides, yours is way cuter..” The magicat shoved against the blonde, brooding. Her left ear twitched. “Also, ‘mnot cute.”

“Yess you areee!”

“Whatever, jus get offame, dummy.”

Catra snaked a leg up, hoping to use her knee to pry the Adora shaped weighted blanket off so she could go to bed. A thrill of heat rushed down her stomach, electrifying and dizzying, when her leg brushed past her hips, feeling the space where Adora’s legs connected. A moan nearly escaped her lips, and she pressed her knee between the blonde’s legs.

The other girl’s lips creased into a thin line, her eyes closed, and Catra felt her pressing closer to her.

_Yes. More._

The magicat’s eyes shuttered and her lips formed a small ‘o’ shape. She needed more.

Footsteps echoed down the far hallway, and their eyes snapped open. Looking down at themselves and back into one another’s eyes, they blanched. 

“Sorry, Catra. Didn’t mean to - hic! -”

“Don’ worry stupid. Jus get up so we can get somewhere more private.”

Adora leaped off the girl, eyes wide. She looked terrified, and suddenly Catra realized how what she had just said must have sounded.

“I can’t make fun of you without someone joining in out here.”

Adora smiled tersely, and her voice was tight when she spoke again, “Can’t have that. Come on~!”

She grabbed Catra’s hand and pulled her toward the bedroom.


	4. Bedtime

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hello, all! Thank you to everybody leaving kudos, and ESPECIALLY THANK YOU TO EVERYONE COMMENTING. Y'ALL SERIOUSLY MAKE MY DAY EVERY SINGLE TIME. I got a couple requests for drunk Catra and Adora snuggling, and so I leaned into it! This turned out a little angstier than I expected, although considering how much more complicated everything is going to get in the coming chapters, I think it's a really good tone shift. I hope you all enjoy this chapter~!

Adora’s blazer hit the concrete floor of her and Catra’s shared quarters, followed by her belt. Hopping on one foot, she began prying her boot off the other. The blonde fell unceremoniously to her ass, giggling and snorting as she pried the shoe off, following suit with the other. Looking up, she noticed Catra was watching her. The magicat was brandishing her signature sideways smile, one eyebrow quirked as she tilted her head down and off to the side. She was watching Adora out of the corner of her eyes. She stood with her weight cocked to one hip, arms crossed over her chest, and she was tapping one foot against the floor.

“You know, I’d’ve thought with all of the combat exercises you ace that you’d have at least some kind of coordination outside of a life-or-death situation. Isn’t, like, a sense of balance ‘key to any competent soldier’?”

The first day they had begun physical training, as they had been to walk without falling down, their instructor had driven those words into them. They hadn't been old enough to speak in full sentences, but the Horde made damn sure they had learned the lesson as soon as they were able to understand them. And here Catra was, reminding Adora of the cardinal rule they had been instructed in; the rule she had no real capability of following, quite literally drunk off her ass and haplessly wrestling her left boot off from her foot. Adora pouted, pursing her lips together and making pitiful noises at the boot that just _would not get off._

That little off-center smirk had broken out into a full and lopsided grin; the fangs on one side of Catra’s face poked through a part in her lips, and her nose was wrinkled with barely concealed amusement. She burst into squeaky, airy laughter as she sunk down to her knees, batting the blonde’s hands away from the boot.

“You never really had that much in the way of fine motor skills to begin with. Figures alcohol would fuck that up a little more. Lemme get the boot for you, you look stupid jerking your foot around like that.” Catra was slurring as she clumsily lowered herself to the ground across from the blonde.

Adora smiled sheepishly, lifting the vice like grip she had kept on the shoe. Her foot was stuck midway through the ankle of the boot when she uncrossed her legs and lowered it back to the floor. Catra leaned forward, grabbing the empty toe between both of her hands. She braced her legs against the floor and leaned backward, pulling at the boot in a rowing motion.

The blonde girl slid across the floor with Catra’s movement, giggling and making tiny _whee_ sounds. She flailed her arms in the air gracelessly, and her legs completely covered Catra’s torso.

“Urgh!” The magicat was yelping, swatting at the other girl’s calves and knees. Adora’s legs were propped over Catra’s shoulders, and she was laying down, still laughing.

“You’re so _stupid_! You’re supposed to stay still so I can pull your boots off, remember?”

“Nononono, Cat-” Adora’s speech broke and she wheezed-laughed breathlessly, unable to finish her thought. Catra yowled in annoyance, thrashing and wriggling around until she could prize herself out from under the blonde’s very gorge - _poorly placed_ \- legs. 

“Hah!” Catra’s crow of triumph was immediately followed up with a protesting sound from the blonde.

Wobbling as she stood, the magicat straightened herself out and huffed, “Okay, dummy, I don’t know what your angle is but this is not going to work! I am going to take this boot off whether you cooperate or not. 

Catra grabbed Adora by the ankle, and yanked her across the floor. The blonde slid near frictionlessly across the linoleum as the other girl tugged at her. She brought her hands up like she was gripping a steering wheel. 

“ _Bbbbrrrrrsrhhhhhh!_ ”

She tilted the steering wheel back and forth for a few moments, oblivious to the fact that she had come to a stop. When she noticed, a near half minute later, the disappointment on her face would have nearly been worth it, had Catra seen.

The girl in question was pinching the bridge of her nose and sighing. Her shoulders shook with soundless laughter, and there was a suspiciously hand shaped welt on her forehead.

“If you’re done, speed racer, I’m going to take your boot off now.”

“Good thing I’m not! _Vrrrrrrrrm!_ Catra, pull me!”

Catra groaned, bending low to grab the blonde’s boot. Or rather, she would have if she hadn’t landed on all fours. 

Adora’s laughter shot up an octave; she was squeaking and snorting, and her half shrieking laughter was accompanied by a pointing finger levelled at her companion. 

“You’re,” she paused, wrapping her arms around her side and shaking back and forth, “duuhhhh-ruuuunk!”

Catra gingerly stood back up, bristling and half-growling as she spoke. Her voice was deathly quiet and she was smiling.

“Yeah, buddy, it’s almost like we drank a bottle of rum together.”

Adora’s laughter intensified, something that should have been impossible considering how intense it already was. Her face was pink as the sunrise in Thaymour the day Catra had come to rescue her. 

“We did do that, silly! Did you forget?”

Catra’s jaw slacked - _the idiot!_ She shook her head, braced a foot against the blonde’s hip. The girl yelped, squirming and fighting the whole way.

“Adora! Does alcohol just - hic! - turn you into a liquid?”

Adora snorted and broke into another fit of giggles, “Alcohol doesn’t do thaat, silly~!”

_Did she just… not understand sarcasm?_

Catra scowled, digging her foot into the other girl’s hip, grabbing the boot harshly and twisting it off the blonde’s foot. Turning on her heel, the magicat broke for the bed across the room.

“There, you can be a pain in the ass all you want now. I got your stupid shoe off, and I’m going to go lay down.”

Catra shed her daywear as she padded toward the bed. She slid into the covers, clad in her underwear as she slipped under the covers.

_Pap pap pap pap pap_

When suddenly an Adora clad in her underwear appeared. Catra’s ears twitched in annoyance as she turned over on the bed.

“I know we said we’d sleep toge - _share the bed_ tonight, but you have to stop annoying me if that’s something you want, Adora.”

Muscular arms snaked around her waist, and the sensation of ice chilling down her spine ran through her. Adora pulled her flush to her body, resting her chin on the crook between Catra’s neck and shoulder, nuzzling the back of one of her ears. 

“I’ll see what I can do.” The blonde’s voice was warm, soft, and sweet. 

Flush with the soft warmth of Adora’s body and hearing the sound of Adora’s voice, the chilling sensation that always came with being touched when she couldn’t see it thawed away. It was Adora. She was safe.

She wished she had eyes in the back of her head just so she could look into those magic cerulean orbs. She could feel Adora’s gaze burning a hole in the back of her neck, and the heat ebbed from her throat to her chest, running down her stomach and pooling somewhere just under it. She shifted uncomfortably, and Adora whimpered and clamped tighter.

“Move over dummy, I’m trying to roll over.” 

“But… I wanna hold my kitten…” Her voice was soft and pouty, and the innocence of it all made Catra’s heart throb. That’s what she had said the first time she had ever held her. She could still remember it like it was yesterday.

She had just been taken into the Horde a few months ago, and Shadow Weaver already seemed to have it out for her. Adora, her senior by two years, had taken her under her protection. For the most part, the blonde was rather capable of keeping her out of trouble. But Adora, six at the time, had a limit to how much damage she could really prevent. Not that Catra had known this.

To Catra, Adora had seemed larger than life from the beginning. Her eyes had been the most calming thing in the world to look at, and her smile, complete with missing teeth and everything, had the power to set nearly anything right in the world.

Nearly anything.

The first time Catra had gone exploring on her own and found her way into the War Room, Catra had come face to face with Shadow Weaver and several other Force Captains and Commanders. Although she had known she shouldn't have been in there and made a move to leave, she had still been noticed by her surrogate mother, who did not take kindly to her intrusion. Although she had not said anything, nor given any sign that she had noticed the child in the room, after the meeting adjourned it was clear that the dark sorceress was most displeased.

That had been the first time she had been spoken to like that by the witch. With blackened tendrils of her dark magic, she had grabbed her by the ankle, lifted her high over her head, and shaken her back and forth while berating her, verbally and physically.

_You ungrateful little wretch, from the day you arrived you came with the habit of going where you are not wanted. If you ever, ever intrude on one of my meetings again I will personally see to it that you are summarily executed, just like everyone else from your pathetic backwater village._

That was the first time Shadow Weaver had struck and choked her. After the woman had left, Catra had made herself as scarce as possible, hiding in supply rooms and dark corners, crying softly and tenderly running her fingers across her red and inflamed neck and bruised body. It had taken Adora hours to find her and talk her down. But at the end of it, she had said exactly what she had just said to her that night in the bed. Those were the words that had always reached Catra, reminding her that everything was okay. And so, every time that Adora had said she wanted to hold her kitten, Catra had always let her. 

“I know you do. I just… wanna look at your dumb eyes… o-okay?”

Catra’s voice was softer and quieter than she had intended for it to be. Adora had gasped quietly, and made the room in her arms for the girl scoot away, to turn and face her. She was smiling, and her cheeks were colored a soft, dusty pink..

“This isn’t because I like you… It’s just -” 

_It’s because I love you._

“It’s weird sometimes, being touched when I can’t see.”

The blonde nodded her assent, slowly closing her eyes and pulling the girl closer. If Adora knew that was an excuse, and she always knew when Catra was giving excuses, she had the good sense not to challenge it and ruin the moment. 

They were facing one another on the bed now, hands resting in the comfortable, small distance between their two bodies. Adora’s eyes flitted back and forth, looking at Catra’s own heterochromatic ones. Their chests rose and fell in rhythm and their cheeks were flushed, courtesy of their libations. 

“So I, um… I don’t know if I ever thanked you…” Adora brought a hand to her hair, pulling out her ponytail and running her fingers through the blonde locks. “You know, for saving me from the Princess yesterday.”

The cold grip of guilt washed over Catra, bubbling in her chest and throat and muting her. She nodded uneasily. She didn’t save her, and she never could have. Not from Shadow Weaver’s sick mind games, and not from the Princess. 

She could tell her. She could make this right. Tell her that the Princess was the one who had been trying to save her, that she had let the dark magician steal her power, her memories.

_And then what would happen?_ An oily thought stopped her for a moment, an uglier response from her body stopped her for longer.

_She knew you all your childhood. Hers were the first eyes you saw and felt safe looking into. Your first memory. And she replaced you with people she just met, chose the whole world and whatever it might need over you. She would choose anything in the world over you if you gave her the chance._

Catra swallowed thickly, and shut her eyes. Adora reached out to touch her, and she shrunk away.

“You sounded so afraid I couldn’t help myself.”

That wasn’t a lie. If Shadow Weaver hadn’t separated them she wouldn’t have let her memories be erased. But once she heard the Princess incapacitate the sorceress, she had figured it better to stay away so Adora could see what was best for her again. So she could leave her again. But when she had cried and called out for Catra, begged her to not let the Princess take her away… She was so weak, so selfish, so much of everything that witch had told her she was that she simply couldn’t do what was best for Adora. 

No, the thought of losing Adora again was agonizing, and the moment she had any room to imagine that the blonde might have wanted to stay, even if she wasn’t in her right mind, she wasn’t ready to look the gift horse in the mouth. 

“I was terrified. I didn’t know what would happen to me. But the most unbearable part of it all was that she’d take me away from you again.”

_Take what you can get, Catra._

That same voice, slick and dark as oily shadows, promised her she’d never deserve anything better than the facsimile of love. That if she ever told Adora what really happened then she’d lose her sooner rather than later. A life without Adora would destroy her, and she wasn’t ready to lose. Not yet; not until Adora realized how awful she was and left on her own. 

She couldn’t bring herself to destroy another beautiful thing that should never have happened to her.

Catra’s heart twisted painfully in her chest. She meant well, but what Adora was saying was simply not true. Just like when the blonde had promised to never leave her again earlier that night. She closed her eyes, sucking down the honeyed lies, ignoring the way her stomach soured and her eyes stung.

She was such a liar. She knew Adora would see through her again; would leave her again. But not tonight.

Tonight she was sharing a bed with the most beautiful girl in the world - Adora. Adora, who was telling her she couldn’t stand to be anywhere but by Catra’s side. Adora, who was tenderly wiping the half tears she wouldn’t let fall. Adora, who was pulling her into a tender embrace, kissing her forehead and rocking her back and forth as she sobbed quietly into the blonde’s chest.

“It’s so hard to thank anybody for that. To let anybody save me. All my life whenever I couldn’t protect you something bad happened. I always have to be in control, always have to protect everybody. It’s so hard to let anybody help me, to let anyone come close.

“Sometimes it feels like I’m not supposed to let go and be happy, because then the whole world, _you_ , Catra… You’ll get hurt.”

  
Adora was sniffling, and Catra felt warm, wet spots leaking through her hair. She wrapped her arms around the blonde, tangling her fingers and balling her fists around the camisole she wore to sleep.

“I… I don’t know. It sounds so stupid but there’s so much I wanted to do, so many things I wish I could have changed about how we grew up. But Shadow Weaver, she -” Adora paused, taking a shaky breath, “she always told me that unless I looked out for Lonnie, Kyle, Rogelio, and… and _you_ , Catra… That I’d lose all of you.

“And I know sometimes all of you hated me. You especially. For being too bossy, for being a people pleaser, for never breaking the rules even if it was for something I wanted to do. But I’ve lived all my life thinking, _knowing_ , that if I didn’t look out for everybody then there’d be nothing left for anybody. 

“I know you hate me sometimes for what I do. But every time I’ve made a choice that hurt you Catra, it’s been because I’ve been trying to protect you. To save you.”

Catra tensed in the blonde’s arms. They had talked about this a few times in the past, although Adora never went into such detail. 

_Huh. I guess alcohol is an Adora truth serum._

“But that’s not always true! Adora…” the magicat paused, sniffling wetly, “what if trying to save everybody means you destroy yourself? What if it means you hurt everyone around you and destroy your life?

“What if it means someday we don’t fall asleep in each other’s arms every night forever?”

Adora sobbed, pulling Catra closer to her. “I don’t know,” she started, her voice was cracking and breaking with emotion as she spoke, “but I know that you saved me. And I never thought I got to have that. Sometimes, Catra… Sometimes you make me feel like it’s okay to not be in control, to not know where everything is supposed to go. To not always be running damage control and planning for every awful thing that could happen. It’s like the whole world falls away, and you’re the only thing that matters. That being around you and choosing you is all I ever have to do.

“What happened last night made me remember when we were young. We promised to look out for each other. We said as long as we have each other nothing bad can really happen. I don’t know when I forgot to believe in that - in you… But last night in the Black Garnet Chamber, something changed. And I know I believe that again.”

Catra whimpered, grabbed onto the front collar of Adora’s nightshirt, twisted her fingers in it and tucked her elbows to her ribs. She looked up at the blonde, nose a hair’s width away from hers. She could feel her heart pounding in her chest, feel that strange heat pooling up in her stomach again. Her tail wrapped around one of Adora’s legs, and she brought their noses together, nuzzling against her.

“Please, please, please don’t ever forget. I’m sorry for everything. All I ever need is you, Adora. You make everything worth it.” 

Adora’s lips were soft and warm as they pressed against the magicat’s wet cheek. Catra nuzzled against the blonde and gingerly wiped away some of the tears on her face. She scooted herself up on the bed until she was chest to chest with her best friend. She pushed her down, and she felt just as safe and loved as the first day they had met. When she was all cuts welts and bruises, a caged and brutalized parody of a toddler, looking into the magic blue eyes that always seemed to speak a secret nobody but Catra could understand.

“Come here, dummy.”

And Adora gratefully fell into her chest, wrapping her arms around her back as they cried together.

Catra smiled through her tears, kissing the crown of Adora’s head the same way the blonde had done for her just moments earlier.

“I’ll never go anywhere else again, Catra. No matter what. Thank you for reminding me it’s okay to be selfish and need help sometimes.”

The thought that Adora would come to her senses and leave her again was almost foreign that night as the girls drifted into a pleasant dreamless sleep, a tangled mess of arms, legs, hair, and tears. Almost.

* * *

The day he landed in Despondos, and crawled from the wreckage of his ship to see the starless Etherian sky, Hordak had wept for the excruciating loss of his ability to connect to the hive mind. And from that day on, he had been filled with a connection of an entirely different sort - one to his own sense of guilt and self-loathing. He hated himself for being isolated, for the imperfections of his own self that could no longer be brought to light and purity by his elder brother. He felt guilt for hating one created in Prime’s own image, and he felt guilt all the more for every sensation and showing of emotion. He had hoped beyond hope, and by doing so guilted beyond guilt, that in conquering Etheria in his brother’s name and returning the planet to the wider universe he could offer some sacrament to his brother for the transgression of his individuality.

The day he found he had been given a name, such a heinous blight it was, he had raged and screamed, incapable of handling the sheer volume of self hatred he had experienced at the notion. He had locked himself in his study and desperately yearned for the cleansing erasure of the self that only Prime’s light could have provided. 

Gradually he had learned to adjust to this new life, living like a blind painter. His crippled state may have forced him to break the covenant of his birth, but it had perfected his faith and love in Horde Prime. He had learned to accept this trial by fire, an exorcism of his own shadows and the failing of his personality. And through his guilt and self loathing he had perfected his devotion to returning to his brother, offering him a world that could show him how to seamlessly integrate magic and technology, marrying his greatest weakness with one of his many awesome strengths. 

But then… Entrapta had come along. And in less than one day, she had seen his broken and failing body, his failed attempts at creating clones. She had recognized his individuality and the many imperfections thereof, and her response to each one of them, what she had said when she saw his many great failures and his mangled and broken body had given him the most confusing and painful pause.

_Your imperfections are what make you beautiful._

She had clasped his hand in hers and offered him the creature comforts that so often made her own bouts of ailment more bearable - most endearingly of them, tiny bowls of soup (who would have considered tiny food? To those in the Galactic Horde, nourishment had only come from nutrient-rich amniotic fluid and the favor of Horde Prime) - and she had even begun plans to construct a suit of armor for him, one whose cybernetics and advanced technologies were designed to counteract the damages of his body.

Indeed, Hordak was fond of Entrapta. When he realized that, a rush of emotions had filled him. Surprise, happiness, confusion, guilt, and most peculiarly of all, a protective and warm sensation that had left him defying the teachings of Prime. These feelings, these sins of his, he had found he wanted more. That the craftsmanship of Entrapta’s engineering and the concern and care she had put into everything she had done with - no - for _him_ , had left the warlord coming to realize he had actually come to cherish his individuality.

If someone as considerate and intelligent as Entrapta could appreciate him, how could these transgressions of his truly be as heinous as Prime had said?

The first time that thought had occurred to him, he had laughed at the notion. The idea that some girl scarcely more than a child would know better than Prime, who had outlived stars themselves, was foolish on the surface. And yet… somehow, despite the logical nature of the statement and the way it so obviously could not be true, he could not bring himself to fully embrace his faith the way he had used to.

The darkness of emotion had so thoroughly disrupted his perspective that it was growing difficult to find the life Horde Prime had deemed appropriate and righteous to be the best possible version of his existence.

It was hardest when Entrapta would laugh, when the sparks from metals she would solder would fizzle against her gloves, the way her eyes would sparkle at the thought of new technology. In moments like that, Hordak’s individuality had seemed a blessing, because without it he would never have grown so fond of the young woman.

He had come to find their scientific endeavors the highlight of his days, and they had begun exploring all manner of different avenues of experimentation. From the very straightforward advancements in his existing cloning, programming, and portal research, to applications of the intersection between magic and science; including their most ambitious project. 

Entrapta had theorized it was possible to _hack the planet_ , and Hordak was incredibly curious to see what could be done - not only to the end of using it to his advantage in the war against the princesses, but also because it would make his… friend happy.

* * *

“Ugh, Bow, I know I shouldn’t have talked to Perfuma like that. Like, I get it. She’s one of the only people other than my mom and you that really care about my well being. But what good is guided meditation and froo-froo nonsense when we’re losing a war? The Horde’s been poking at the Whispering Woods constantly, Salineas is under siege, Plumeria’s completely under Horde control now that Perfuma fled. It’s only a matter of time until the Horde controls the seas and we’re starved into submission! And nobody seems to care!”

“I mean, you’re right but…” the archer sighed. “Being an ass to somebody doesn't really change any of that. There has to be a way to make this right. Adora’s still She-Ra, even if she can’t remember that, right?”

Glimmer’s mouth was full of cake, and her hands were covered in frosting as she nodded. “Uhf-huhf.”

“Well, then that means all we need to do is get the sword back to her, right? I mean, last time she saw something when she picked it up. Maybe if we get it back to her and take her to the First One’s beacon in the Whispering Woods then we can get her to come to her senses. She’s still the exact same person she used to be, and I know that means we can reach her again.”

“We have to,” Glimmer sighed, “for the good of all of Etheria. We need She-Ra. Now more than ever. The Horde is going to win, and my mother is too much of a coward to fight back!”

Bow took another bite of cake, and looked at the sword meaningfully. 

“How are we going to get her to come back out here?” 

“Oh, that’s the fun part,” Glimmer’s eyes were gleaming now. “ _We_ are going to go to the Woods to find Swift Wind. And then we’re going to get him to take us to the Fright Zone so we can bring the sword to her.

“You’re insane, Glimmer. Like actually insane! We just got you back, your mom spends days trying to get you to stop glitching, and pretty much immediately you decide it’s time to waltz back into the Horde stronghold. What is wrong with you?!”


	5. Bad Dreams

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hey all! Sorry for taking so long, this was a real pain in the ass to write. Life's been super busy, I started at a new store for my job, and I'm still kind of getting settled into my apartment. Between that and my girlfriend and a new video game I got and general writer's block this kind of felt like pulling teeth. But it's finally done!! YAAY!!!! So please enjoy, and as always, feel free to leave kudos and comments. The comments especially make my day!

War. War smelled differently than in the Fright Zone simulations; it tasted different than the last bits of toothpaste in her mouth when the games started. It looked different - there were far less princesses, and far more fires. And the smells? By Etheria, the deathly smells.

Fuel. Ozone. The static in the air, and all of the smoke. Singed hair, scorched skin, boiling blood. The sounds of death were shockingly similar between the men and the women, between the women and the children. Even the animals sounded similarly terrified. Up from the cacophony of mortality, floating like the embers caught in the plumes of smoke rising from the village and the graves, the realization that the Horde had deceived her rose like a blood sun. 

She was breathless, panicked and shaky as she stumbled through the destruction, hoping to find whoever was in charge and let them know there had been a mistake. There was no rebel stronghold here; Thaymour was a civilian target, one the Horde had no business attacking with such prejudice. The flames licked at her calves and the uneven rubble terrain she had been crossing had left her stumbling, rolling an ankle and nearly doing the same to the other. Shattered glass flew through the air as homes were shelled, and the shards found a home in her shoulder. It was all she could do to stare at her feet, make sure each step did not leave her falling flat to the ground, a stationary target one of her allies could accidentally shoot at A low, droning buzz filled the air and the blonde looked up from the rubble she was walking through.

Her heart froze in her chest and her stomach dropped out from under her. Standing on her shaky legs, Adora stared down the barrel of a tank.

* * *

It had been easy to assume that, for once, Adora would not be punching and kicking in her sleep. She had been so peaceful and so… floppy earlier that night. The blonde was a very giggly and docile drunk. Catra had just figured that the general soft agreeableness of the evening would have carried over to the night, especially as they had fallen asleep facing each other, hands clasped in the small space between their bodies. 

Unfortunately not, it would seem. Relaxation always came slowly to Adora, and was paid for dearly. The blonde had a knack for fitting twice the amount of stressing out she had missed into whatever span of time immediately followed any calm activity, even in sleep. She was punching, sweating, kicking. Tossing in the sheets and whimpering, she had woken her companion with a start. The first time Catra had tried to wrap her arms around the girl and try to soothe her, she had been _bopped_ over the head. 

Any subsequent attempt to touch her had culminated in, at best, some kind of lighter physical deterrent like a slap or a shove. Catra ground her teeth, clenching her jaw to keep from shouting as the blonde’s socked foot pressed into her stomach sharply, nearly knocking the wind out of her. 

“Adora!” She whisper-hissed, “hey! Adora, you need to wake up!”

* * *

The hatch of the tank opened up and Catra, beaming, jumped from it and onto her. The smoke and embers parted elegantly around her airborne frame before she landed, pinning the blonde to the floor and flashing one of her trademark sideways grins. The world slowed down for a second, Adora’s mouth went dry and her blood ran thin. Her teeth glittered maliciously, embers drifting past the magicat’s silhouette. 

“CoVeR fOr mE CatRa, nOboDy wIlL noTicE I’m GonE!” She laughed, tapping a finger against Adora’s forehead, “Seriously, did you just immediately go and get captured or what?”

“Catra, you see what the Horde is doing, don’t you? We have to call off the strike, this is a civilian target!

“They’ve been lying to us all along - Hordak, Shadow Weaver, all of them! What we’re doing here is wrong! They told us we were fighting to free Etheria, but look around you!”

“Well, duh! Did you _just_ figure that out?”

“Come away with me Catra! We can fix this, I know you’re not a bad person.” She wanted to clasp the other girl’s hands in her, but nerves stopped her dead at the wrist. She swallowed thickly. “Catra. Please.”

“We can’t! Please just come home, once we’re calling the shots it’ll be different! We look out for each other, right?”

“I’m not going home, Catra.”

A flash of searing pain knocked her to the floor, and the blonde cried out in pain. She looked up at the face of her attacker, and her heart twisted to see Catra’s tear filled eyes.

“So that’s it then?! You’d trade our whole lives for what? A sword and a couple of people you just met?” 

Catra raised an open fist and drove her claws toward Adora.

The strike never connected. The magicat’s breath wavered, her arms shook. A look of pained surprise overtook her as she looked to her stomach. Adora’s eyes followed her gaze.

A sword, golden and glowing, with a teal gemstone in the center of the guard, was in her hands. And she had just impaled Catra.

* * *

Adora woke with a shout, punching at the air. Catra cried out in the darkness, tumbling out of the bed with a _thump_.

“Ow! What is _wrong_ with you Adora?”

The blonde recoiled in horror - _she had just hit Catra_.

She bolted out of the bed, back pressed against the wall as she shied away from the girl. She was crying, inching her way closer to the door, panic in her eyes.

Catra stood up, raising her hands up to her sides and at shoulder level. 

“I’m sorry.. I know you had a bad dream, I shouldn’t have been in your face. I um.. I’m here now, and it’s gonna be okay, I guess. Do you want to, like, talk about it and stuff?”

Catra slowly encroached on the blonde, “I.. don’t let it get to your head, but I’m a little worried about you, okay? You’ve been off since you ra- since the Princess took you.”

Catra reached a hand out to touch the blonde and was shoved roughly away. She looked up at her, a half-arm’s length away from the girl. Adora, hysterical and lachrymose, peered down at her through watery eyes.

“Get away from me!” Her voice was trembling as she screamed, running for the door and slamming it behind her before the magicat could get a word in edgewise. 

The room turned a few degrees colder; Catra blew a tuft of her hair out from where it had fallen across her forehead, poking its way into her line of sight. She turned on her heel and pressed her back to the cold steel of the barrack walls, sliding down the length of it until she was flush with the linoleum floor, knees hugged up to her chest. Her ears drooped, her tail folded over her bare feet, and her breath snagged roughly in her throat as she turned her eyes, awash with tears she was blinking away, up to the ceiling.

“What on Etheria do I even do? I _can’t_ lose her again.” The harsh sound of scraping stone filled the room. Catra kneaded the tile over and over until crumbling swatches of the ground bunched up under her palms in a half-assed parody of the sand she had seen all across Salineas. 

She beat her palms against the ribbonettes of the linoleum, rocking her head back and forth, bashing the back of it against the wall, in time to the metronomic tick. Going after her felt like a waste - like it was only a matter of time until she lost her anyway, and wouldn’t it just be better to stop fighting it? 

She needed a walk, she had decided. To clear her head and get away from their bedroom. Quiet as kept, moon-eyed, and on the _que vive_ , Catra slunk one foot, a head, then the other out the door frame. She was going to the Forge. The scents of metal and smoke comforted her, made her feel almost as at home as the blue eyes she’d have to learn to live without again.

And she was only going there for the smells and scenery. Not because she and Adora spent so much time there over the years. And certainly not because she had a hunch the blonde would be there. Nope, nope, nope, not at all. 

* * *

“Uhhhh, Glimmer, are you sure you know where you’re going?” 

“Oh, come on Bow! No! I really don’t, just like every other time you asked! But what other option do we have?”

They had been wandering through the woods since the early dimness of the morning prior, when the first rose gold fingers of the sunlight had begun peeling back the canopy of the forest, leaving the floor awash in the pinkish purple glow of the Etherian predawn. The morning songbirds had been singing, and the flowers had straightened themselves up like the royal guard when Glimmer or her mother had passed by. Dawn had given way to august midday, humid and golden and hot enough to leave both Glimmer and Bow awash in sweat, thirsty and overheated, protesting the telescoping trek they had embarked on. The wildlife had given pause as they had stepped on loose bits of underbrush, snarking and quipping, cranky from the sticky forest humidity and the air thick enough with moisture it could be cut like the cake they would have eaten with their fingers on late nights, in the company of Adora. 

The sticky dampness of the roaring midday had faded to dusk, then ebbed to nightfall. Now it was the dead of the night. The moons hung in the sky like ripe fruit low on the branches of a dark tree; and the sky was void of any other color save for theirs. The cloistering heat had tapered away to a comfortable temperature, and the trackpad Bow had taken with him finally seemed to be working a little better.

“Seriously, this is not the best way we could have gone about this! We could have - _mother of moons,_ ” he interrupted himself, swatting at his exposed arm and stomach, “we could have tried to lure her away! I swear, Glimmer, if I get bit by another bug I’m going to be so angry!”

For all the tension and desperation, the Princess couldn’t help but laugh tightly. “Maybe wearing something that covers your tummy would have helped.”

“Hey!” He smacked at himself again, “it’s not a _tummy_. They’re _abs_ and I’m proud of them!”

Glimmer snorted, but otherwise remained quiet.

“And seriously! Do you know how much work I had to put in for these babies?” He jogged ahead of her, turning around and walking backwards to gesture at his musculature. 

Glimmer wrinkled her nose and looked to the side, half smiling and shaking her head in play annoyance. 

“Well still! You chose to show off your abs instead of dressing, you know, practically for the terrain we’d be crossing!”

A strange look crossed over the Princess’s face, and fake annoyance bled into genuine frustration. She growled and spoke again.

“And that’s our entire problem as a rebellion! If either of us had thought to take this _entire_ war more seriously and not go to the Princess Prom then we wouldn’t have been kidnapped. And Adora wouldn’t be brainwashed, I wouldn’t be unable to use my powers, and Entrapta - she’d still be alive…

“It’s our fault, Bow. We’re fighting like children and Princesses, and the Horde is fighting like a military engine! They’re going to win because we’re too soft, because we don’t compromise and we don’t fight to win, just to survive. And _this_ ,” she laughed incredulously, gesturing at her companion’s exposed midriff. “This is just a symptom of the problem!”

Raising his hands in a placating gesture, eyebrows up and eyes wide, Bow spoke with a start, “I get where you’re coming from, Glimmer. I know it was kind of dumb for me to not dress for the occasion, unlike you.” He gestured at the boots, greaves, bodysuit, gloves, and first aid kit strapped to the girl’s back. “But we can’t just compromise everything we are to win a war, or we could become everything we’re fighting to save the world from. Maybe we shouldn’t have gone to Princess Prom, and maybe I shouldn’t have just gone through the woods without dressing for the bugs and all… but if we don’t draw the line here, then where do we?”

“I’m sorry for snapping at you, Bow… I just…” she sighed, older than her (admittedly scant) years in that moment, “but the Horde took my father away. They’ve taken away so many families. I just want to make sure that they can never do it again. No matter what.”

“And I really get that, Glimmer. But you can’t let winning the fight make you forget what you’re fighting for!”

“If the Horde wins everything we’re fighting for will be gone anyway! All that matters is the war! You say you get it, but you’re just like all the others - none of you understand!

“You’re too afraid of taking real power, of fighting the Horde on their own terms.. My mother is _paralyzed_ with fear, and the rest of the kingdom is too busy burying their heads in the sand and hiding to even bother with trying to win the war! We’re all a bunch of sitting ducks! We might have had a chance with the Princess Alliance, but because of _me_ , because I wanted to go to Princess Prom when I should have remembered the war… Because of my stupid mistake we lost our greatest military assets - She-Ra is out of commision and Entrapta is dead! What I’m fighting for is an Etheria free from the Horde’s existence, and whatever else there is after that doesn’t matter! None of us matter, nothing but making sure Hordak can’t destroy any more homes or families!” 

“Unbelievable, Glimmer. You are unbelievable. You’re _sixteen_ , and you’re willing to give up the last of your childhood to do what, fight total warfare? You can’t use your powers anymore, you don’t have allies, and you’re trying to do what right now? Run headfirst into the Fright Zone with a first aid kit and She-Ra’s Sword strapped to your back? This is how you throw your life away, not by spending time with the people you love.”

“Urgh! Bow, this is our only option! We _have_ to keep our eyes on the prize, on stopping the Horde. This is all that’s left. So just stop talking and march!” 

“Then when you do stop them,” he spoke quietly this time. His voice was soft and raspy; he was the scratch of the thick smattering of leaves and grass crackling underfoot, the shadows of the clouds darkening the moon, one more whisper in the woods, “then there really will be nothing left for you, won’t there?”

They walked on in tense silence, following the sound of a distant humming on the woods’ horizon.

* * *

Catra climbed the sides of the Forge to her usual perch on the north side of the building, glancing over her shoulder at the thick blood moon to her left. The smells of the smoke, the iron, the steam from each piece of equipment’s quench filled her nostrils. Familiar smells, all, the promises of war and battle and glory and she felt her shoulder relax ever so slightly. This was almost home now; she had spent so many nights up here when Adora had defected, sleeping on cold, hard steel under the moons had always been easier than the too-empty bed without Adora’s warmth next to her. 

Something in the air was different tonight, more sour and acidic. Not the way that the disinfectants and chemical washes were. Those stung in the soft palate and the back of her mouth, made her nostrils tingle and left her fighting sneezes for minutes on end. No, this was different. The smell of life and sickness, acid that stuck in the back of her throat and made her stomach burn. It was all alcohol and bile.

Someone had made sick up here, and she had a hunch who it may have been.

“Adora? Adora, where are you?”

“Catra,”Adora’s voice was raspy and slurred, “you shouldn’t have looked for me.”

“Oh come on! I just came up here to clear my head! This is not - pfff - this isn’t because I was, like, looking for you or something.” 

“I mean it, Catraa -” She hiccuped and sniffled, “all I ever do is hurt people. I try my best to stay in control, but I can’t always. I ju-just..

“I can’t remember my lost time. I was dreaming I was destroying everything I’ve ever known in the Horde. That I - I was a Princess in my lost time. And I - I - I -” her breath snagged in her throat and she sucked in uneven jags of air, coughing and sputtering.

Catra was at her side in an instant, wrapping her arms around her and rocking her back and forth. Adora wriggled and squirmed, crying in her arms. 

“Catra, let me go! S-stop it, Catra. Please, stop it!”

“Hey, it’s okay, it’s okay, it’s okay. Just breathe, please. I’ve got you. You’re safe with me, remember? We promised.”

“Stop, Catra, stop! Let me go!” Adora was sobbing, writhing and fighting.

“Hey. Adora, listen to me. Stop for one second and listen to me.” Catra’s voice was soft and firm, and she held the girl in place, squeezing her arms tighter around her frame, burying her head in her neck and purring loudly.

“I’m gonna count to three. If you genuinely want me to let go, you tell me before I get there. After that, it doesn’t matter how many times you tell me to or what you say, I’m not letting go. Got it?”

Adora nodded against her chest.

“One.”

Silence settled between them, the blonde wasn’t even breathing she was staying so still.

“Two.”

Adora wrapped her fingers in Catra’s mane.

“Three”

Adora tangled her hands up in the hair, pushing Catra closer to her as she cried.

“But I - I… I punched you.”

“Yeah, dummy, and do you know how many times I’ve scratched you? You do still _have_ the scars, you know. I swear, you don’t always have to be in control. You won’t hurt me, all I care about is that I get to take care of you too, you know. We promised.”

Catra, on her knees, wrapped her arms around the blonde, pulling her just slightly further from her. Adora keened, pulling against her hair to say _closer_.

“It’s not cause I like you or anything, frankly it’s mostly because your breath stinks,” Catra started, and Adora giggled from underneath her. “But whenever I’m upset having something in my mouth always helps. So, uh, here.”

She awkwardly held a tin of mints and chewing gum out to Adora, who gratefully took a few.

“Yeah,” she sniffled, “it’s not a nice taste. Thank you, Catra… This is really sweet.”

The magicat in question snorted, tucking one of Adora’s stray hairs behind her ears. “It doesn’t matter if you hurt me by accident, idiot, we made a promise. And I make good on those.”

She pulled Adora back into her chest, rocking her back and forth and blanketing the crown of her head in a smattering of kisses.


	6. Confession Pt.1

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> WOAAAH two updates in one day!! I got like 5 new comments with the last update and it made me so happy I just HAD to keep writing. Seriously, a huge thank you to Velocibirb, PwiPwiPwoo, and the very amazing tjshortie and Sarconistia for the love. And thank you to everyone else reading and leaving kudos! This has already been received so much better than I thought it would be, and I have to say that I'm truly loving every moment of writing this fic! Thank you guys so much, and please don't hesitate to leave comments, constructive criticism, the works! If there's anything you want to see in the fic, feel free to request it! Otherwise, I hope you enjoy! I tried to make this chapter useful for plot purposess and actually have the Catradora stuff go somewhere more than the fluff it has been. I hope it works!!

Catra had always been on thin ice with her; a second son, too old by the time Shadow Weaver had taken the creature in to be as easily groomed as the newborn Adora had been. By that time, her golden child had been eight, and the urchin had been six, two years lived on the streets. Too far gone for the sorceress’s ministrations and, more importantly, not worth them. The magicat could offer no tangible returns for investments, no guarantees to become anything more than what it already was. Adora, however… 

Adora was one of the First Ones, and she was awash with the Old Magic. Shadow Weaver had known from the first time she had held her that the girl would someday gain access to the ancient warrior She-Ra. She had determined then to nurture the child, gain its loyalty, mother and befriend it, foster its talents and abilities. Hordak, ever the bewildering mix of naivete, cunning, and belligerence, had failed to see the innate value in the child. He had been too quick to gift the tool of his undoing, the stroke of providence that would free Shadow Weaver, to the dark sorceress. 

It had always been the same, Shadow Weaver had come to learn. In Mystacor she had been bound by the Sorcerer’s Code, by the laws of the Princesses, and by the morality that had kept her from understanding every facet of the magic that had blessed Etheria. Power had been a privilege, one trickled from the ruling elite to the rest of the sorcerers, and the kinds of power that were acceptable had been decided only by those who held the lion’s share of it. In the Horde she had been bound by the whims of Hordak, denied any power save that which he had granted her. The Black Garnet, he had made clear time and again, had been a loaner, one he could take at any moment of his choosing. Her place in his ranks had always been conditional on her ability to train capable soldiers, to supply methods of countering the Rebellion’s magic, and in maintaining her enduring loyalty to him.

A loyalty which, she had learned through the assistance of her shadow spies, would culminate in this world being brought from Despondos to the wider universe. A fealty which would ultimately result in the destruction of Etheria and its assimilation to Hordak’s elder brother’s empire. A devotion to be rewarded with the spilled blood of countless innocents, the destruction of an entire world, and the eradication of the one thing Shadow Weaver truly held any loyalty toward - magic. The study of it, the understanding of it, the knowledge of magic and the power it brought. It would be eradicated if Horde Prime had his way, and she understood that well enough. 

That was why she had been so desperate to control Adora, to hold the tiger by its tail. A leashed She-Ra could destroy Hordak, prevent him from returning Etheria to Prime’s dimension, and preserve the magic she had vowed to study all her days. And, failing that, She-Ra was powerful enough to leave Shadow Weaver with a fighting chance to destroy the Galactic Horde, if she could handle her cards carefully and bring other useful material to her playing field. It all began with loyal pawns, pieces she could utilize to their fullest without leaving any information to be found by Hordak and his own intelligence network. 

No, Catra was of no use whatsoever, scarcely a blip on the radar of the woman who held the salvation of the entire planet on her shoulders. Her attitude, her insolence, her inability to listen. The only function she had served, the only place she was fit to occupy in the witch’s machinations, was another convenient reward, a convenient object to punish and reward, to maintain Adora’s loyalty when the chips were down. That’s what she had always been. When Adora broke the rules, when she didn’t listen, when her performance was not up to snuff… It had always been Catra who had suffered. A strike here, the denial of a meal there. _You simply must control yourself better, Adora_ she would say. _Don’t let Catra do that again, sweetheart_ she would croon. All to the end of teaching Adora perfect control of herself and the people around her, to forge her into a completely obedient weapon capable of perfectly exerting her will over the people around her. If she believed her actions and whether they aligned with Shadow Weaver’s will had a direct and immediate impact on the well-being of those around her, she would always keep perfect poise and posturing, remain completely subservient for the good of everybody around her. It was that blind obedience, that willingness to please that the dark sorceress needed from the most valuable weapon in her arsenal.

And so, Shadow Weaver was displeased with current events, to say the least. Looking down into her cauldron, peering through the eyes of her umbral spies, she had seen the prone, entwined frames of Adora and that… wild creature she had taken such a fondness toward. It was disgusting, she had decided, that one so unwilling to listen to her commands had forged such a closeness with her Adora. Whispering dissent and strife into the ears of her child seemed to be the only purpose the nuisance seemed to have in life. To see Adora going to that _thing_ instead of her, accepting comfort and affection in such a flagrantly inappropriate manner from her pet… The witch was disappointed at best, that her Adora could embrace such distractions so freely despite her little… _reboot_. At the most realistic, and worst, she was absolutely livid that the insolent magicat had sunk her insolent claws so deeply into the child’s mental state. It was clear, now, that she had to take matters into her own hands to separate the two of them. For Adora’s sake, so she could be everything she was destined to be; perfectly loyal to her mother, a fully realized She-Ra prepared to overthrow Hordak and install her on the throne, an enforcer to help Shadow Weaver build her own vision of Etheria.

No longer could she isolate the two of them through rank - Hordak had seen to it that the creature received a promotion to Force Captain; she could no longer deploy Adora to see combat without the pet, not without driving a wedge between her and her young protege. And she needed the girl to be loyal and obedient. She could not simply oust the nuisance, send it to the Crimson Wastes or Beast Island, not without much the same repercussions. There were no easy, viable options that would produce the results she wanted through direct intervention, not yet at least.

She traced a sigil in the cauldron, looking through the eyes of another shadow spy, the one she had sent to follow the recently-escaped Princess that Adora had taken something of a shining toward in her… compromised state. 

_-way! All that matters is the war! You say you get it, but you’re just like all the others - none of you understand!_

_You’re too afraid of taking real power, of fighting the Horde on their own terms.. My mother is paralyzed with fear, and the rest of the kingdom is too busy burying their heads in the sand and hiding to even bother with trying to win the war! We’re all a bunch of sitting ducks! We might have had a chance with the Princess Alliance, but because of me , because I wanted to go to Princess Prom when I should have remembered the war… Because of my stupid mistake we lost our greatest military assets - She-Ra is out of commision and Entrapta is dead! What I’m fighting for is an Etheria free from the Horde’s existence, and whatever else there is after that doesn’t matter! None of us matter, nothing but making sure Hordak can’t destroy any more homes or families!_

The dark magician’s smile was positively saturnine. This Princess was not like the others, not like the sorcerers of Mystacor, nor like the Princesses who had sworn her off when she had first come up with a plan to destroy the Horde as Light Spinner. 

_Unbelievable, Glimmer. You are unbelievable. You’re sixteen, and you’re willing to give up the last of your childhood to do what, fight total warfare? You can’t use your powers anymore, you don’t have allies, and you’re trying to do what right now? Run headfirst into the Fright Zone with a first aid kit and She-Ra’s Sword strapped to yo-_

The other one had confirmed the witch’s hopes - the Princess had the Sword, and was heading toward the Fright Zone, no doubt trying to find Adora and reinstate her powers as She-Ra. They were hoping to return her lost memories, no doubt, assuming that somehow the Sword could do that. Unless the magic in the sword was a _lot_ more sophisticated than it seemed, it could not, it would not; nothing but another sorcerer, versed in the arts of mind manipulation could do that.

Or perhaps this Princess knew that, and did not care about returning Adora’s memories. Perhaps she was simply after another weapon to deploy against Hordak. Whether or not returning the child’s memories was their objective or not, it seemed the Princess and her did share the same ultimate goal. She did not sound like she was afraid of power, of getting her hands dirty, of winning no matter the cost.

No, this Princess… had potential. Perhaps it was a fortunate thing she had escaped, after all.

It was a fortunate thing nobody else was in the Black Garnet Chamber, Shadow Weaver had decided. Her smile could have turned blood bad as milk left in the sun.

* * *

Such was his heresy that the thought of returning to Horde Prime was becoming increasingly… unpalatable. Hordak’s sins had multiplied, whip-quick like the Etherian kangaroo-rabbits in the springtime. The morning after he had met Entrapta, he had awoken to what she called a ‘breakfast in bed,’ replete with toast, jam, eggs, and these creased pieces of sweetened bread topped with butter and a liquid sugar - ‘tiny waffles and syrup’ she had said. 

Delicious, he had decided. The scientist had watched with mad glee as he had devoured the meal, surprised at how _delicious_ food could have actually tasted. He had known, of course, what various delicacies from across the wider universe were composed of. But the privilege of taste was reserved only for Horde Prime. When he had made landfall on Etheria, he had rationed out the amniotic fluid reserved for clones such as he, and after they had been depleted, he had subsisted on the rations he had engineered, similar enough in flavor profile and nutritional constitution to still abstain from taste as much as possible. 

“Do they now have food like this where you are from?” Entrapta had smiled at him, seated at the side of his small, spartan, berth.

Guarded anxiety had filled him, he did not want to talk about his life before now. Why did he not want to tell her about it, about the light of Horde Prime? He found himself coughing on the eggs, spluttering as he awkwardly tried to formulate an answer.

“I, well…” he began testily. He wanted to snap, but the thought of snapping at her was unpleasant in some way it had never been before. “So you know that I am a clone.”

Entrapta nodded, leaning forward. She was listening to him. Intently. Of her own volition with no threat of physical force on his part. He quashed the fluttering feeling in his chest - he was not free falling, despite the peculiar sensation.

“In my society the original Horde Prime has access to privileges and goods that we, as his clones, do not. He is the epicenter of our shared hive mind, he sees all of our thoughts and prompts all of our actions. Among the rights Prime has would include emotion, the expression of emotion, hedonistic pleasures of the flesh like taste. Prime receives luxury, while we as his clones are denied such things under threat of reconditioning.”

“Reconditioning?” Entrapta was giving him a look of.. pity. It was revolting to imagine she pitied him.

“It does not matter,” he snapped, “When I return to his side, I am sure you will see what it entails, as I am due for much of it.”

“We don’t have to go back, Hordak. There’s still so much to discover, to learn! Once we learn how changing energy input to Runestones will affect the planet, we could uncover so much more about the nature of the planet! We could find more efficient energy sources, maximize crop yields, undo the ecological damage the last twenty years of warfare have wrought! There’s so much left to learn before we re-enter the wider universe. It sounds like everything you’ve learned you’ve been taught by somebody else. Don’t you want to observe something yourself?”

Conflict filled him, and the fiery rebuke died in his throat. He should have struck her, ought to have reprimanded her for her gross ignorance. But he was so far gone now that he was beginning to agree. The thought had been playing at the edges of his mind for months now, but never before had it felt so viable, so tangible.

“Perhaps. What would we observe today, then?”

“I’m so glad you asked! Actually I was hoping to return to my castle in Dryl, there’s a few things there I’d be needing to start getting set up for some of our new research projects! Ahhh!” She was beaming, up and out of the chair, hands up at her shoulder level and flailing in tight little circles in front of her chest. She _squeaked_ giddily.

Hordak found himself biting back unmalicious laughter, a sensation completely new to him. His lips quirked in a smile, and one of his ears flitted against his head.

“Hmph, very well. I trust all of these implements are essential for our work?”

She nodded exuberantly.

“Then perhaps it would be best that I accompany you, so you can familiarize me with the equipment as we move it.”

* * *

Catra woke up first, lazily opening one eye. She looked down, saw a red arm around her waist, and instantly panicked. She yelped, desperately pushing the arm off of her.

If she acted quickly she might be able to counter Shadow We-

Oh, it was Adora. The memory of last night came rushing back, and the magicat reddened with embarrassment. They had fallen asleep together, as usual. This time, however, they had ended up… spooning. 

_And she was the little spoon_.

Adora’s arms cinched at her waist, and the blonde yawned groggily from behind her. The warmth of her breath tickled at Catra’s spine, just between the shoulderblades. The magicat’s stomach lurched and a shiver ran down her back. She wanted to turn around and bury her face in the crook of Adora’s neck, shut the rest of the world out, and go back to sleep.

The chemical fumes from the Forge must have been getting to her, what a ridiculous line of thought.

“‘Mornin’ kitt’n,” Adora was drawling into her back, lips pressed up against the fabric of Catra’s shirt. Her hot breath tickled at the magicat’s back, and she couldn’t help the low purr that rippled through her. 

Her tail flicked across Adora’s legs, and she turned around to face the blonde, flashing her trademark sideways smile.

“Morning yourself, sleepyhead. Do you know how rare it is I wake up before you?”

“Couldn’t help it,” the blonde mumbled, scratching behind Catra’s ears and giggling as the girl’s purrs intensified. “I had this beautiful girl holding me all night.”

Catra’s heart skipped a beat. Was Adora just utterly oblivious about how stupid that sounded? She swatted at the other girl’s well muscled shoulders, and she could feel the heat rising in her face.

“Don’t say it like that, stupid! It sounds weird like that!”

Adora giggled and snorted, “Say what like what? Last night you rocked me to sleep, and you kept kissing the top of my head! Honestly, Catra, if I didn’t know any better I’d start assuming you liked m- ah!”

Adora’s teasing was cut short with a sharp flick on the nose. Catra’s eyes were huge, her ears laid back, and her tail flicked behind her. She was growling as she spoke.

“ _None of that is because I like you_. You just… have a knack for being super pitiful sometimes, and it gets boring being around someone as mopey as you. Now come on, get up! This is our last day of assigned R&R before we get back to training, I wanna do something fun with it!”

“Yeah? Like what?”

“Ooh, I know! I wanna wrestle or spar or something!”

Adora’s eyes drifted to the bruise on the magicat’s cheek. She stiffened, and Catra’s eyes went wide as she realized what she had just said. The blonde shrunk away from her, pulling back and no longer touching her at all. 

“Or if you’d rather hit the rec center and do some exercise or just go to the mess hall or play a card game or something we could do that too! I didn’t mean… I wasn’t thinking, we don’t have to fight again, I know that you had that bad drea-”

“I think I’d rather just… do something else. I think I’m going to go now…” Adora’s voice was quiet and robotic, she stood, head hanging low. Her hands were balled up in fists. She was so far away, even before she turned her back and walked away.

_Why did that make her feel as empty as it did?_

The hollowness in her chest was unbearable, and so she followed after the blonde.

“Adora wait!”

The blonde broke into a dead sprint and Catra sprung forward, giving chase.

Adora set a gruelling pace, expertly weaving between the metalwork along the Forge’s roofing, slipping between smokestacks and sliding underneath the protrusions of the vents. When she climbed down the side of the Forge, her movements were expert and deft, and she had left Catra in the dust. 

“Let me be, Catra! I don’t want to hurt you again.”

Something inside of Catra snapped, she sunk to all fours and galloped after the blonde, snarling. 

“How can you possibly be so stupid, Adora? You’ve never hurt me! Not when Shadow Weaver blamed you for what she did, not when I saw you cry, not even when I get angry and hurt you! You’ve never stopped caring for me. Don’t you get it?”

The distance between the two had narrowed, and Catra finally closed it with a decisive pounce. The two of them rolled across the concrete, a tangle of limbs and hair and yelps. When they had settled, Adora was pinning Catra down, and the girls were gasping for air. Judging from the wetness on her forehead, the blonde was sweating on her. Gross. She stared daggers at her captor.

_Why did she always end up on the bottom?_

“You always say that! Say it’s not my fault, say that I’m not stupid, say that I have never hurt you. But don’t _you_ get it Catra? Every time I slipped up for even a second, every time I wasn’t exactly what Shadow Weaver wanted me to be, it was _you_ she came after. It was _you_ she would take in the Black Garnet Chamber, you she would dangle in the air with her magic, _you_ she would hurt. Every time I did something wrong it was you! Why don’t you see that it’s always been my fault? That every time I push you away I’m doing you a favor, that if I stay far away maybe you won’t be punished every time I do something wrong? I can’t rebel, I can’t run, I can’t do anything other than what she asks. Every time we leave she finds us, and every time she finds us she punishes you!” 

Catra’s glare softened as she realized the warm splotches falling on her face were Adora’s tears.

“And now I’ve gone and done it too! Maybe it was an accident this time, but look how many times I’ve hurt you, Catra! It’s just a matter of time until I do it again.”

The magicat struggled and squirmed under the blonde’s fierce, unrelenting vice of a grip. She bared her teeth and hissed, rocking back and forth and trying to get free, to get ready to run away when Adora rejected her again. She sighed and looked down at their bodies, and grimaced. There would be no escape plan this time. No way out, despite how vulnerable she was about to become. 

“No, you idiot,” she sighed. She relaxed in the blonde’s grip, keeping her eyes shut. The heat in her face was unbearable. “It doesn’t matter what excuse the witch used for what she’s done to me. She made her choices, and they were never your fault. The only thing you’ve ever done to hurt me…”

She was shaking now, and so was Adora. This might be her one chance to reach her. She took a wavering, deep breath. Exhaling tremulously, deliberately opening her eyes, she looked back up at the blonde. Her heart was pounding in her chest as her eyes flickered up; but the moment she caught wind of the misty blue above her, she felt a little more centered. Just like always, from the moment she saw Adora for the first time until now, she still made her feel safe.

“All the time I’ve known you, you’ve protected me, supported me, stood by me. You were the first face I saw when the soldiers let me out of the kennel I was brought to the Fright Zone in. You were the first friend I ever made. You were the first person I ever knew who promised to look out for me, Adora. You’re everything to me. When I came out you were the only person in the world in my corner. You even convinced the medics to compound medicine for me. Everything I am is because of you and…  
  


“And the only thing you’ve ever done to hurt me is run away. I need you, Adora. I need you so much closer.”


	7. Confession Pt.2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hey all! This turned out kind of shorter than I'd have liked, but I feel like everything that needed to be said here was said! I spent the evening working on this, and I'm hoping to potentially have chapter 8 out sometime around Monday or Tuesday, but for now I hope this scratches the itch! I'm still trying to get set up to get the plot really rolling, but I feel like I've finally hit the inciting incident to bring about my vision for the AU season 1 arc! I'm really excited to see where things go, and I'm so glad all of you are too! Please feel free to keep commenting and leaving kudos, as it really is just like the highlight of my day every time I see one of those emails! 
> 
> Anyway, enough rambling! Please enjoy the new chapter!!

“I need you, Adora. I need you so much closer.” Catra keened, pushing against the weight of the blonde on top of her. Her hands flexed and her arms strained, but she could not push forward to touch the girl above her, the one pinning her down and staring dazedly.

Adora’s eyes were as wide and blue as oceans. Her dumbstruck stare loomed over Catra with the same breadth as a clear sky. The confession hung in the air between them, terrifying as the forbidden wilds of the Whispering Woods. Her stomach was twisting inside of her, and her heart threatened to beat its way out of her chest, flipping and pounding at her ribs like a caged bird. 

Her mouth went dry and she looked down between the two of them. She took in the space, or what little of it there truly was, between the two of them. Catra’s toned, athletic body lay shaking and squirming underneath her. The magicat’s claws sheathed and unsheathed as she kneaded her bare hands against the air; and, dumbly, Adora thought to move her hands from the girl’s wrists. Slowly, deliberately, she shifted her weight to her left arm, and Catra whimpered at the increasing pressure.

_Sorry, Catra._

The apology died in her throat, and an embarrassingly unsophisticated sound escaped her parted lips instead. 

They never had much in the way of Sex Ed in the Horde. Nothing more than the basic information - a male and a female mate through insertion of the male genitalia into the female. Upon the male’s orgasm, sperm is deposited which may fertilize an egg within the female, resulting in the beginnings of a baby. Romance had always been frowned upon, meant to be secreted away from one’s comrades in much the same way as a soldier with a cold. There was so little information for what Adora was feeling, and she wasn’t sure about any of it. Was she reacting like this because she’d known Catra the ‘other’ way for so long? Was this just what friendship felt like? Was something wrong with her, with both of them, for her to start wanting her best friend like this?

Carefully, slowly, looking intently into the magicat’s eyes the whole of the way, she moved her right hand up, taking Catra’s fingers and entwining them with her own. She was gaping up at her, mouth parted. The points of her canine teeth stuck out from the tops and bottoms of her lip lines, and Adora found herself wondering whether they would break the skin if the magicat were to nip a trail from the lobe of her ear down to her collarbone. Her already impressively pink face darkened several shades, and the corners of Catra’s lips quirked into a small, sideways smile.

“Is… is this okay?”

_Mother of moons_ , Adora thought, _have I always asked this stupid of questions?_

Save for a quick, single nod of her head and the way she slowly closed her fingers around Adora’s hand, the magicat was perfectly still and silent. She unfurled the fingers of her other hand as gently as she could. Her mouth ran dry, and she closed her slack jaw. Catra’s eyes were slightly crossed and her head tipped forward as she looked up at the blonde. Adora’s lips were a hair’s breadth from her and the girls could feel the warm splashes of breath spilling from each other.

The blonde’s eyes were half lidded, and her voice was low and soft as velvet as she spoke. She was straddling Catra now, and as she took the weight off their clasped hands, it settled in her ass and legs, pushing her hips deliciously closer to Catra’s. The magicat’s chest rose and fell with rapid breaths and she remained perfectly silent. Wide eyed and blushing, she stared incredulously upward at the other girl. Her mouth parted just wide enough Adora could see the tips of Catra’s fangs sinking into the corners of her lips. She leaned forward, bringing their chests near flush together.

“How close do you need me?” 

“Adora..”

Catra arched against the ground, pressing herself toward the blonde on top of her. Her eyes squeezed shut and tears were brimming at their edges. 

“Just don’t leave me behind again, okay?”

Adora froze stock still. She had left before. Why had she left before? 

_The Sword, the Rebellion, Grayskull._

A woman made of purple light; a beacon, a flying horse. Something in the air had changed, she was forgetting something. She had to remember. Plumeria, Salineas, Bright Moon, the Land of Snows, Mystacor, the Whispering Woods.

There was something big out there, something running throughout Etheria, binding the planet and all its kingdoms together; something she had come to understand somehow. Something she was… fighting for? Something worth leaving Catra behind for? It seemed impossible, that thought, how could anything be worth leaving Catra behind?

“-a? Are you okay? Adora!” The magicat was squirming under her.

“The Whispering Woods.” 

Her voice was quiet as the slip of leaves rubbing together in the breeze. She stared down at the magicat under her. Catra’s ears flattened, she slacked under Adora’s hands, and she looked away from the blonde defeatedly. Adora was up in an instant, dusting herself off 

“But… I thought we -”

“I know, Catra. But we can’t, not right now. There’s something going on here, something bigger than the two of us. I have to go to the Whispering Woods again, there’s something out there. Something that can help me remember my lost time. You’re my best friend, Catra. Please, come with me.”

_Best friend._

Catra sat up, hugging her knees to her chest. Her ears twitched and drooped and when she looked up at the blonde, tears were brimming in her eyes. 

“Then when, Adora? When does it stop? When can we just… be without you worrying about everything else?” She wiped her eyes with the backs of her knuckles, clearing her throat and settling her chin on her knees. The magicat’s tail tucked up over her feet, and she looked up at the blonde meaningfully.

“I… I have to do this, Catra. You say I’ve been tortured by Princesses for months, that I’ve been a prisoner someplace, that I’ve been gone for months! But I can’t even remember any of it, nothing but waking up with the girl who knew my name, who promised she’d come back for me! I have visions, dreams about my lost time… A woman with a sword, one made out of purple light. Beacons and tanks and blood on my hands. If there’s even a chance I can remember what happened while I was gone, a chance I can protect you from…” she looked down at her hands, swallowing thickly. “From what I’ve seen in my visions, I have to take it! Maybe what I lost could help us win the war.” Adora was desperate, looking down at Catra with pleading eyes and holding out a hand. “So please, come with me.”

_She’s going to find out you lied to her. She’s going to leave you again._

Catra stared daggers at the hand, spitting and standing. She stepped forward, and looked up into Adora’s eyes with fire and defiance.

“That’s still all you care about, isn’t it? That stupid war? It’s always like this - you’re always talking about the next thing you just _have_ to do, aren’t you? So go ahead! Do it. I know you’ll leave me again when you remember whatever it is you were looking for, what difference does it make if I just stop playing along with you until then?”

“Catra, I never want to leave you. I just… I can’t stay here. Not until I know what happened; until I know what my flashbacks mean, what happened in my lost time.”

Catra was fuming now. Even after everything that had just happened, the last few nights and her confession… Adora still didn’t get it, did she? 

“The truth? You want the _truth_?” She laughed cruelly, shifting away from the blonde. Her mane was wild and her tail had puffed; she stood hunched and animalistic, prepared for a fight. “The truth is you _defected_ and left me behind to clean up your mess.”

Adora’s eyes widened with horror as she shook her head, backpedaling away from the enraged magicat.

Catra wasn’t done though. She snorted, stalking up to the blonde with the measured steps of an experienced predator. She softened her gaze, smiling cruelly. She pressed the tip of a claw against Adora’s chest, and when she spoke again her voice was quiet and sharp, knives in the dark.

“ _Y_ _ou_ found out you were a Princess, and _you_ ran off playing magic with all your new Princess friends. _You_ walked away from our life together, from everything you’d ever known, for some glitter and a sword. The blood on your hands in your visions, Adora? You _killed_ your fellow soldiers. And they _all_ know it,” she looped around the blonde, tail clinging to the girl’s waist. Adora’s eyes were brimming with tears. Catra rested her head on the blonde’s chin, purring in her ears. She wrapped her arms around the girl, running a hand through her hair as she sobbed, head bowed to her chest. Catra’s small, high laugh filled the space between them.

“I’ve spent the last few days trying to protect you from what you were, giving our comrades time to adjust to seeing a _murderer_ walking free among them. I’ve done nothing but try to help, and what did you do, Adora?” She hissed, pulling away from the girl and shoving past her shoulder roughly, turning to face her.

“At the first hint you could have something other than _me_ you’re ready to run away again!” Catra’s face contorted with rage. “So go back to the fucking Whispering Woods, trade everything away for a sword and the chance to play hero again! That’s all you’ll ever do, that’s all that you’ll ever care about!”

“I was stupid thinking that when you came back you’d look at me and just be happy; it was never like that before. It’ll never be like that. Anything in the world is better than me, isn’t it? So just go, get out of my sight - you’ve made it clear that you know what’s good for you!”

She heard Adora’s footfalls, and turned away roughly. She held her breath, hiding the way her shoulders were heaving and rolling. She sunk her claws into the fleshy palms of her hands, damming the tears in a harsh blind. She stood rigid and still, waiting for Adora’s footfalls to get quieter.

Only they didn’t. A hand settled on her shoulder, and the magicat screamed. She raised a hand to strike the offender, eyes still closed.

Her wrist landed in rough, calloused palms. She growled in frustration and ineffectually shook against her captor.

“Catra, you can say whatever hurtful things you want to me. I know I deserve it for leaving you behind. But -”

“The fuck you do! You deserve all of it and more!” 

“I know I do, Catra. I know. You can be angry at me, as angry as you want. I did something awful. I’m trying to fix it. I just -” She sighed, bracing both her hands against Catra’s shoulders.

“I don’t know what I did wrong yet. Help me get my memories back, and I promise no matter what I see that I won’t leave you; I want them back so I can understand how I hurt you. So I know how to fix this. I promise. No matter what, whether that means we both come back here or we both join the Rebellion or we both run far away from the war. No matter what I’m never leaving your side again, Catra.”

The magicat’s seething finally dissipated, and she regarded the blonde with a contemplative interest. A desperate hope blossomed in her chest, and she repeated Adora’s oath dumbly.

“You’ll never leave me again?”

“I promise, Catra.”

“Ugh… we better find a skiff then, I guess.”

* * *

Bow and Glimmer had finally found the source of the strange humming, walking for a near half hour in the tense silence that had settled over them. 

They had found a clearing in the woods, an open field laden with dark flowers. Brambles of thorny bushes lined the clearing, and serpentine vines snaked between the waist high bushels. Hard, seedy fruit grew on barbed bushes, and the grass sprang from the ground in scraggly, half dead jags. In the center of the clearing was the shining ethereal outline of a crouched figure. Clothed in brilliant robes, the light from the entity cast the entire meadow in daybreak tones. The shape, a woman it seemed, hummed to herself as she tended the plants of the field. Tracing lines through stems and branches, she cut the living ends of the plants, trimming them to her taste.

Bow and Glimmer crouched low, looking to one another before nodding. They moved forward slowly, methodically. Bow had an arrow at the ready, and Glimmer kept a hand on his back, ready to teleport them out the moment danger should arise.

  
“Please, children,” the voice, rich and dark and so, so _familiar_ , called out to them. The figure had not yet turned around, though she had straightened to her full and considerable height and looked over her shoulder at the duo. “There is no need for your trepidation. I am what remains of the sorceress Light Spinner, and I have come here to ask for your assistance.”

The shadows flickering in the light whispered of dangerous and uncontrollable power, and Glimmer found herself unable to resist the thought of something so wild.

"What do you want?"


	8. Return to the Woods Pt.1

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hello all!! This one took some work, it was kind of hard trying to work out some character motivations at this point, but now that I've done that I actually think I have a really detailed working plan for the general arc these next few chapters will be following. With most of the difficult brainstorming and planning done, I'm hoping to churn out a few more updates in quick succession! It's looking like I'll have another one for sure ready by Friday, and hopefully a couple other updates as well during the rest of the next week. As always, feel free to leave comments, and kudos, and bookmarks! All of those amazing things make this super nice and rewarding for me, and I love making something other people love. Please enjoy!!!

“What do you want?”

The luminous apparition clasped its - her - hands together, clasping its fingers loosely around the edges of each hand. She moved, floating and puttering between the thorny brambles, periodically lowering a hand to ‘pet’ the vegetation. She tested the tips of thorns with her noncorporeal thumbs, and when one such spike made it through the back of a hand, Bow and Glimmer shuddered.

“I have been watching you for some time, Glimmer. And I believe that what I want is the same as you - I want to put a permanent end to the Horde and its despotic leader.”

Glimmer’s hands unclasped from their sides, and her eyes flashed in recognition. “Hordak.” 

“Precisely.” The spectre had appeared behind the duo, swifter than the eye could have followed, and they recoiled and yelped in surprise. “We Etherians are unaccustomed to imagining a world beyond ours. But Hordak’s objective lies far beyond here. 

“He aims to bring this planet to a wider universe as an offering to one far more powerful than him. The Rebellion struggles against his devices, his machinations, his rudimentary armies. And if his superior ever were to take notice of Etheria -”

“We wouldn’t stand a chance against an invading army like that.” Bow finished the sentence, looking at the Princess at his side.

Glimmer’s eyes set hard as steel. “We have to stop him before he can signal for help.”

“It is good that you understand; given the reluctance of the Princesses to seize real power and strike against the Horde, such a task would be impossible without the help of She-Ra. I trust you are bringing her the Sword?” The apparition flickered a shade darker, gesturing to the weapon strapped across Glimmer’s back.

“Her memory was erased by a dark sorceress,” Glimmer sighed, rubbing her arm and looking away from the specter. “We seek to return it, and we were hoping the Sword could do that.” 

Bow piped up, “We know it has healing capabilities, and we thought it could also be used to counteract the magic used to block off her memories.”

“Only a sorcerer can undo the spell used to erase your friend’s mind.”

“My aunt Castaspella!” Gimmer gasped, beaming, “she can help us! She could restore Adora’s memories.”

The specter nodded sagely. “If she is a sorceress, that may well work. However, there is another option.”

The clouds parted, and one of Etheria’s blood moons hung low in the sky, casting the midnight garden in a crimson lowlight.

“You are the daughter of one of the most powerful sorcerers to ever walk the world,” she began, pointing a glowing finger at the Princess. “And, as such, your connection to magic runs deeper than you could possibly imagine. You were planning to use your aunt to restore She-Ra’s memories, were you not?”

Glimmer nodded.

“I propose an alternative solution - do not go to Mystacor. Become my apprentice, and learn the ways of magic like your father before you. Through me you can achieve a power greater than any Princess, the kind of power necessary to end this destructive conflict and bring peace to Etheria. Learn the ways of sorcery free from the narrow, dogmatic view of the Wizard’s Guild of Mystacor, free from the codes and principles that have long weakened your people. Learn through me and gain victory, Glimmer. Use my knowledge, I beg of you.”

The sorceress’s light flaked away from her in shards and particles, drifting upward to the dark night sky. Bow disappeared, and the two of them stood in silence. The night sky filled with strange, twinkling lights. Glimmer thought to call for Bow, but her mouth could not open to make a sound. Her breath had been taken from her, it was twinkling overhead.

“They were beautiful, I hear..” The specter, dark and oily black as the sky had been before her, spoke ruefully. “The stars. That’s what the ancients called the dark sky’s lights. When more than just these moons were ours.”

“They’re _stunning._ ”

“They have always been our birthright, the magic, the stars. But we were robbed through a terrible war, a terrible secret - did they tell you, Glimmer, about the woman who took the stars away?”

The Princess shook her head slowly, “No.”

“I thought not - it is not a story the Princesses would tell you. It’s an Etherian legend, old as the ruins, old as the sight of the stars, old as the magic that rests in the forgotten depths of our world…. But we were robbed of that power by the First Ones, by the people of She-Ra.”

* * *

“By Prime, _why_ have you made this place so difficult to navigate, Entrapta?” Hordak scowled, stalking and skulking and stomping behind the mad scientist. Entrapta and he had made a clandestine trip to Dryl, the two of them. With Entrapta’s apparent disappearance and no clear line of succession to the throne left behind, the castle had fallen to negligence and the city had plunged into political tumult. 

“Well, the point was to leave my la - erm, _sanctum_ ,” she smiled over her shoulder, winking at the warlord, “someplace private. The only people getting through the labyrinth would be those I wanted to get through!” She punctuated the remark with a raucous laugh, and the echoes bounced against the steel walls. 

“I see.” Hordak’s reply was succinct, curt. The two of them walked in silence for some time before the warlord spoke again.

“Entrapta, you appeared to have a… facial tic when we spoke. You are unwell?”

The concern in his voice was sincere, and the mad scientist found herself beaming as she came to a standstill, turning to face the clone.

“No, silly! It’s called a wink! It signals a hidden intent behind my words, in this case because I’m calling my lab the same thing you do! A _sanctum!_ ”

“A… wink…” Hordak’s ears twitched, and his upturned snub nose crinkled. The warlord, brows furrowing and frown creasing deeper, trod closer to the purple haired Princess. “I see… Or, have seen, as it were.”

A beat of silence passed between them, and Hordak leaned closer to the girl. His frown inverted, and his fangs bared as he grimace-smiled. The warlord squinted at the Princess, still smirk-puckering, and widened his eyes. On his next half-blink his lips curled up further, and his head bobbed forward again. Finally, his eyes completely shut, and his restrained expression peeled back to a toothy and mischievous grin. 

Entrapta, whose head had been tilted to the side as she observed the warlord’s peculiar display, nearly fell to the ground in a fit of wild laughter.

“H-hordak,” she wheezed, hands and pigtails wrapped around your side, “are you winking?”

“Yes, I have reproduced your facial tic, have I not?” His response was smug, and his cheeks pinked. “I must admit, my ‘joke’ has produced better results than I had hoped.”

Finally regaining control of her composure, the Geek Princess stood straight and looked up at the warlord, patting him on the shoulder.  
  


“Oh, the pun was very interesting, but that wasn’t what I was laughing at! Whenever you’re winking, Hordak, be sure you only blink one eye, and you only do it one time.”

“Most informative, thank you, Entrapta.”

Hordak remained stock still, and the Princess became aware of her own thickly gloved hand, resting against his shoulder. She looked up at him, smiling through her half-hooded eyes, and rubbed circles against his shoulder meaningfully. A few seconds past like that before the two continued on through the castle.

When they two disengaged, the Princess began reading directions from her datapad without missing a beat.

“So, what is our first research project now that we are here?” Hordak’s voice was gentler than she had ever heard it, and he actually even almost seemed _fond_ of her.

Huh. Someone enjoying her. That feeling was perhaps more radically new than she would have liked to let on; no, the thought was dizzying, glee-inducing, novel, and fascinating. 

“Well, remember how the day we met I actually theorized a possible upgrade to your armor?” Entrapta’s voice was sly, and Hordak could hear the smile at her lips despite her back facing toward him. 

He nodded, grunting his assent. 

The two of them came to face a massive sealed door, dwarfing the kiosk just before it. Entrapta squealed, lunging for the keypad and inputting the series of redundant passwords she used to lock her laboratory.

An obscene amount of typing and one pneumatic _snap-hiss_ later, as the vaulted door opened to the laboratory, Entrapta piped up again.

“Well considering what we talked about and all of the time I had on my hands while you were sick, I went ahead and started up the blueprints and sent it back to my friends over here. We should have a working prototype for you to try out!”

* * *

“That’s impossible!” Glimmer’s fist swung down and struck her palm, and she knotted her fingers together. The stars were beautiful, and the black sky swam in their light, in magic and danger and power.

“I wish it were so, child. But this Adora, this She-Ra… She is not what she seems. She is the proof of a universe much bigger than ours. The ruins, the way she can read the writings of a dead civilization, the ancient art with the lights in the sky. The truth is a weapon, a terrible and double edged sword, Princess.” The stars dimmed in the sky, and the shadowy apparition flickered a few shades brighter. “And with the proper application, both its presence and absence can make you bleed.”

“Think on what I have said, Glimmer. When you are ready to begin your training, every cycle the third moon is new, you will find me here. For now, take this.” The dark shape of Light Spinner pressed the pommel of a wicked blade, thin and sharp in Glimmer’s hands. At the base under the pommel was a ring, and when Glimmer opened it she discovered a vial built into the blad.. “It is imbued with the counter to the dark magic used to wipe Adora’s mind. Draw her blood with it, fill the vial, and return it to me. And I will make sure no untoward curse is placed upon her.”

_Was it daybreak?_

Glimmer looked cautiously through the fingers protecting her eyes and saw the shape of the sorceress. Her eyes flickered upward and, with a remorseful pang, she beheld the great and empty void of the night sky. The light began to fade, and Glimmer stood in the dim silence, dagger clasped in hand. The grip of it felt slick with, she realized as the smell of iron filled the air, blood. 

The ghoul had cut her before departing. 

“Did that… creep you out at all?” Bow asked, shaking his hand in the air and whimpering.

“Also.. you totally still have that first aid kit on you, right?”

Glimmer sighed, dropping to a knee and rooting through her rucksack.

* * *

It was almost too easy, Shadow Weaver had decided. The proverbial stars truly had aligned for her to have noticed so early on the innate magical potential in the Princess, the kind of raw power she had only seen before in Micah. 

She had always planned simply to use Adora, a loyal and obedient She-Ra to depose Hordak and prevent him from signaling his Commander to come and ransack Etheria, or failing that to destroy them both. However, this plan had always predicated itself on Adora’s continued survival up until that point, leaving one other important piece of the equation unsolved as of yet.

That conflict would take years, and in the toss-up between whatever else was out there and She-Ra, she had always expected the girl to die. After all, if the First Ones at the height of all of their powers, bolstered by a fully realized She-Ra could not have stopped the Galactic Horde with anything other than the pyrrhic victory the Heart of Etheria would have been, then there hadn’t been much real hope for anyone who had come after. Meaning that for all of her planning, freeing the magic within Etheria, her primary goal, had not yet been realized despite her plans to safeguard it and her ability to utilize it. However, with Glimmer on the table, a receptive, young mind able to be sculpted and cultivated… Well, the answer had seemed too clear to the witch. Using Glimmer’s own power, her place as next in line for Bright Moon’s throne, everything about her stance on the war and her own lust for power… 

She would make a fine candidate to receive the failsafe buried in the Mystacor catacombs. Yes, she would take this girl as her apprentice, train her in the ways of magic, gain her trust and arrange for the death of her mother. If she could install herself as an advisor in the royal court, when she finally convinced Glimmer to accept the failsafe, the girl would ultimately serve her purpose and die. In the chaos that followed, Shadow Weaver could take the throne, use her newly-amplified powers courtesy of the freed Etherian magic, and conquer the planet. Ideally, She-Ra will have been destroyed while taking out the Galactic Horde, but failing that there should be… other options by then. 

The dark sorceress felt the smile in her scarred cheeks before she broke out into it, clutching at the vials of blood she had just collected. For now, she had some rituals to perform, and a magicat to snuff out.

* * *

The wind whipped past their hair as the skiff soared across the empty, ravaged lands between the Fright Zone and Bright Moon. Blackened, broken tree trunks jutted out from the charred and fallow soil like the broken bones of a compound fracture stuck out of skin. Ashes and bones littered the scorched and shattered earth, and sooty rivulets of filthy water streamed towards filthy, stagnant ponds. A low layer of fog hung close to the land, and the stale smells of decay assaulted the noses of both Catra and Adora.

As they neared the Whispering Woods the corpses grew increasingly fresh, so to speak. Clean bones and ash were replaced with the rotten, liquefied viscera, putrefied flesh, and the half eaten and wholly rotten remains of numerous corpses. 

“I think I’m gonna be sick,” Adora heaved.

Catra snorted derisively, “You’ve been sick, like, all day.” 

“Yeah well, I’m hungover and the smells of literal genocide don’t do a lot to make it much better.” Adora’s hands were in the air, and she waved them defensively, staring her companion down.

“Come on, Catra. It wasn’t this bad last time we were out here, I know it must be weighing on you too. Please talk to me?” Adora reached a hand out to touch the other girl.

Catra scowled, hissing and swiping Adora’s hand out from the air. Hard enough to leave scratches.

“Yeah, actually, it really did fuck with me at first. You know how many times I’ve come through here trying to chase you down and bring you back home? Enough times that this smell could never,” she sniffed deeply, closing her eyes and wafting the grotesque air up toward her nose, “ever make me puke again.”

“You weren’t here for any of it then, Adora. You caused it, and you weren’t there. What the fuck do I talk to you about now?”

Adora’s head was spinning - the smell, the cold shoulder, what Catra said earlier and how easily it seemed like she had just taken it all back. The world had flipped on its head too many times already, and she wasn’t even in possession of her missing time yet.

“I’m so sorry, Catra.”

The magicat was silent, and the unmarked bodies were soon mixed with the smooth body armor of Horde soldiers. Many of which were shattered in places, crushed limbs bent to unnatural angles. Amputated torsos, bodiless heads, and whole corpses with massive slash and stab wounds littered the body.

Catra turned to face the blonde, and her eyes glittered with unshed tears.

“Hey, Adora… this was actually the worst part for me. You wanna know why?”

Now the blonde was deathly silent, pale and weak on her knees. She knew what Catra was about to say, and she wasn’t ready for it.

“I saw all of this, and I knew that no Princess or band of rebels could have done this. Not after what I saw in Thaymour. No, I saw all of this and realized that I was _lucky._ ” Catra swallowed the frog in her throat, and smiled at the blonde. The magicat’s knees were trembling and tears threatened to spill from her eyes.

“I was lucky because the girl I grew up with only decided to leave me in the middle of the night and kill everyone around me. So _thanks_ for protecting me, I guess.

“At least until the moons came up and I was back in Thaymour watching it all every night. The soldiers, the rebels, and that… _thing_ that wore your face.

“So here’s the thing: I know your promise is going out the window the moment you get that sword. That’s all you’ll ever choose in the end, the power to be the _hero_ again,” Catra spat venomously. “But it’s okay. I don’t care anymore. I’ll get you to the sword so I can lay the girl I knew to rest. And then we’re done, okay?”

Adora turned to face the back of the skiff, and her shoulders shook as she cried. How could things have gone so wrong?

The Whispering Woods, ancient and formidable, loomed on the horizon. The smells of war and death gradually faded, replaced with the smells of luscious green, and of terrible secrets Adora didn’t even know she wanted back anymore.

What good were those memories if all it would be was death? If all it would do was drive her away from Catra?

And why could she have made the choice she did? To defect, to join the Rebellion, to kill her brothers and sisters in the Horde? What could have made the two sides so diametrically opposed that all this senseless destruction was worth it?

The Horde fought for Etheria, didn’t it?

Catra shoved her, and Adora broke out of her thoughts with a jump and yelp.

“Pay some attention, dumbass. We’re here.”


	9. Return to the Woods Pt.2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hey guys! Sorry for the late post, I was hoping to have more done but work has been a bitch! I started doing 11 hour days and man has it sucked. I hope you all enjoy this one, please feel free to comment and leave kudos, it super makes my day!

She was coming to realize why it was called The _Whispering_ Woods now. Without the hum of the skiff, or the sound of their talking filling the silence, the trees themselves chanted under their breath. The wind murmured and the brooks truly babbled. The dead leaves on the ground rasped underfoot and a chorus of animals joined the owls in fits of monosyllabic echolalia. Like listening to every voice in a crowd, or hearing one person talking in each of your ears, this place had a maddening quality. Icy shivers ran down her back, her hairs prickled up, and the girl began to realize why most soldiers here didn’t come back.

It hadn’t been so quiet between the two of them the last time they’d entered the swirling dark of the woods, and the last had been so different. That’s what stuck with Adora more than anything else. Last time seemed like it was nothing more than a few days ago, nowhere near enough time for her and Catra to have gotten so.. complicated. It wasn’t that the other girl didn’t believe her, or that she would go back and forth between happy and sad and trusting and jaded. Catra had always been like that, running hot and cold like the showers in the locker rooms back in training - you think you’ve got time, that the hot water will last, and then the tiny allowance of warmth is used up and you’re just out in the cold. That’s how they had always been.

But in the past it had never been this bad - Adora had always known how to fix it, and Catra had always wanted her to make it better, even if she ran away and played hard to get before. Now she was flying in the blind - learning bits and pieces of her apparent betrayal and running damage control for every awful thing she’d done. Catra had never been this bad before, this at loose ends and running to extremes. No, the magicat was clinging onto her with one hand and shoving her away with the other, and for some intangible reason that Adora had no real memory of. The more she thought about it, the angrier she found herself being. The groves hissed and spat, a crescendo of angry, spiteful thoughts to match the blonde’s rising emotions. It was getting to be too much to handle.

“Why are you still helping me?”

Adora knew the answer already. Catra couldn’t let go, she never was able to. That girl was the last fingers of sunlight spilling over the clouds on rainy days, the wild slumps of the last few indomitable summer flowers. The kind of girl who always forgot something in her favorite places to have excuses to go back, the one with an excuse right under her tongue, ready to slip out so she could slip away and run back to some safer place. No, Catra never let go. In her head Adora must have abandoned her, and the other girl must have been waiting for her to do it again.

This was it, Adora had called the bluff. Now Catra had to be honest, like she did when they were children and the world, veiled behind the years they tore into, came ever closer to their reaching fingers, their empty hands. Had to leave some kind of hole in the twist of her language, some little tell so the other girl knew she could fix it, make it okay again.

  
“Because I want to watch you break your promise again.”

_Prove it to me. Prove I’m not worth staying for._

That’s what she meant, and Adora’s heart twisted painfully in her chest. 

“You were my world, and I want to see how stupid I’ve been all over again. So I’ll take you to the fucking sword, you’ll get your little excuse to go off with all your old friends, and leave me behind to face the music for every promise you broke when you left. I wasn’t there last time, I didn’t get to see the moment you made up your mind. I want to watch you leave me, maybe then I’ll finally have a reason to hate you.”

Bitter weight coiled in Adora’s chest, the forest buzzed and rattled as her eyes stung with hot tears. The bodies in the fields, the wreck Catra was becoming on their way to through the woods… Those flashes in her memories, and the way her companion had been shrinking away from her in fits and spurts… Those memories were going to destroy her, but she had to find a way to give something back to Catra, something to make up for it all. So if she had to remember killing a thousand of her comrades to restitute the hurt she’d inflicted on her best friend, she would in a heartbeat. Adora set her jaw resolutely, forcing her eyes open and willing away the wet stinging behind them. 

“Everything you figured out about the Horde - how we’d been lied to and manipulated by all of them. I knew it for years. _Years,_ Adora! And through it all I stayed because I had you and you had me; because we _promised_ to take care of each other and I _knew_ if we stuck together we could fix it all. And you found out in one day and decided it was worth leaving me behind to run off with some randos and play Warrior Hero Princesss!”

Catra was seething, and the woods seemed to be feeding off it.

_Good for nothing_

_Worthless_

_Failure_

_She can’t protect anyone_

The woods hurled insults and Adora shrank behind her arms as they and Catra berated her.

“Honestly, Adora, do I - _did_ I ever mean anything to you?”

Catra’s voice was thick with emotion, and the magicat’s ears drooped. From behind her, Adora watched her back hunch as the brutal trekking pace she had set for their hike slowed down just an increment. Adora bounded beside her, breathlessly, and put a hand on her shoulder.

Catra hissed, puffed up, and turned to strike at her chest.

Anticipating this, the blonde smoothly caught the magicat’s wrist in her rough hand, vicing her grip closed until Catra’s hand, void of circulation, pried open at the user’s protest.

Still, the brunette catgirl drove her hand forward, chopping her feet against the ground and putting her full bodyweight into it. She meant to draw blood, to knock Adora over and to run off into the middle of the ancient magical forest that had entombed nearly every soldier foolish enough to stray in. 

Catra would really rather wager a near one hundred percent chance of dying a horrible death than stick with her until they could find a way out of this mess? That thought filled Adora with self-righteous anger, and she found herself suddenly incensed to fight back.

She crouched low, twisting and pulling Catra’s arm over her shoulder. Backing up into the girl while jerking on her arm, she heaved the magicat’s bodyweight over her back, flipping her smoothly onto the ground in front of her. Wasting no time, Adora pinned one of Catra’s wrists to the floor, and while she was yowling and twisting, trying to fight her way back up, Adora smoothly rotated and dropped, straddling Catra’s midsection between her thighs, grabbing hold of her remaining wrist, and roughly pinning her to the forest floor, driving her forehead against the magicat’s for good measure.

She glared at the wide eyed girl beneath her, gritting her teeth and squeezing her legs in frustration.

“I can’t believe you! You can’t get enough of me until you want me gone! You trust me until you don’t. You help me until you decide you'd rather die by yourself in the middle of the woods than stick around me. You hold me and tell me it’s gonna be okay but you can’t even let me do the same!”

Adora felt angry tears spilling down her face, and the soldier in the back of her head reminded her that such an emotional display was a terrible and unseemly weakness. She quashed it back. _It was Catra, for goodness sakes._

“How do you,” her voice cracked, “how do you get to decide I’ll do it all over again? How do you just decide the last couple days meant nothing? Without even talking to me first! Catra, please, I…”

Catra inhaled sharply and pushed at Adora’s hands, snarling and staring daggers at the girl above her.

“You _nothing._ ” She spat simply, taking a breath and stilling herself. “Not for much longer. So let’s just go already. I’m doing you a favor.”

Unbelievable. This girl was simply unbelievable.

* * *

“And then I couldn’t move or see or hear or feel anything and I could have sworn that I was dead except that it was really _itchy_! And I just don’t see death as being something itchy, you know? Like, maybe I’d feel nothing or maybe I’d just be warm and fuzzy or cold and dark, but like… tingly and irritating? It just didn’t seem right… So anyways, there I was, just kinda a being nowhere for a little bit, and then when I snapped back to the real world I think that thing had you in some kind of, I dunno, like magical hold? You were up in the air and glowing and I was worried for a second, you never really know what you can find in the woods and all, you feel?”

“Uh-uh.” Glimmer’s response was cool and distant, and the weight of the world hung on her shoulders. More and more she was coming to feel like the pressure to free Etheria fell solely on her shoulders. She knew she was the one with the most sway over the Queen, the leader of the (once again disbanded) Princess Alliance, and one of Brightmoon’s Military Commanders. For all of that power, all of that sway, she hadn’t managed to accomplish anything substantial yet.

It would be easy for her to pin the blame on others, her mother, her comrades, her subordinates. But with everything she had just heard, another voice agreeing that they were too afraid to seize power, she was coming to wonder if perhaps she, too, were part of the problem. Too reluctant to fully tap into her available resources, too unwilling to get her hands dirty and engage in the same kinds of spec ops that left the Horde one step ahead, the same kind of willingness to throw lives at an objective until it was theirs. Where the Horde drafted and conscripted, and if what Adora had told her were true, trained soldiers from children, Brightmoon had a small reserve of volunteer soldiers. The difference in training, manpower, technology.. It was nearly insurmountable.

And then… their ace in the hole, their She-Ra. The power fell to a former Horde soldier, someone who was surely willing to do whatever it took to get the job done.. Only, she was out of commission now, and of dubious trustworthiness to begin with. When the specter and she had finished talking, warning her about the power of the Warrior Princess, the desperate importance of holding the tiger by the tail lest Adora go off the rails like the She-Ra before her, Glimmer had felt the first shoots of suspicion fester in her heart. Although the ghost of the sorceress had given her the tools to restore Adora’s memories when the mind meld was over, her parting words had been a reminder of the nature of truth, the importance of its use as a weapon, and the necessity of secrecy in times like these.

Bow coughed into his elbow and piped up, “So… It’s been a bit, what’re you thinking about?”

“Oh me?” Glimmer shook her head, and her hair sparkled in wavy ripples around her. “Oh I just um… was thinking about the place we’re looking for. Adora mentioned an old lady in the woods who knew the secrets of She-Ra. She claimed to have met the last one. If we can find human footprints, or possibly horse ones we could track her back to her home.”

Glimmer quashed the uneasy feeling in her stomach - if this woman knew the secrets of She-Ra, trusting her might be difficult.

“Yeah, that makes sense,” Bow smiled, rubbing a hand against the back of his neck, feeling along the bottom bristles of his fade. “Maybe once we find her we can all eat cake right off the platter in your room again!”

“Yeah,” she smiled. “And maybe this time she won’t get icing all over the walls!”

He smiled widely, and his voice cracked when he spoke. “Who doesn’t know what icing is? Seriously, she’s so clueless sometimes!”

Glimmer threw her head back and laughed; Bow always knew just what to say to help her get out from inside her mind.

* * *

“Catra?”

The magicat groaned deeply, ears twitching in annoyance. “What is it this time, Adora?”

“I’m so sorry. I don’t know if I ever saw how everything affected you before I lost my memory. But I do now and I’m so, so sorry. Please don’t push me away, I don’t want to lose you.”

Catra’s shoulders jumped up and her knees nearly gave out. The girl stumbled, caught herself, and swiped at the blonde’s outstretched hands, snatching them in hers and digging her claws into the flesh on the backs of them. She didn’t want to lose her? Catra snarled, squeezing a little tighter as the other girl winced and bit back a groan.

“You made your choice, and you’ll make it again. If you want to talk about this _after_ you get your stupid memories back, then fine! Otherwise just shut the fuck up and keep moving so I don’t have to spend any more time in this dumb forest than I have to, okay?!”

Her tone was biting and harsh, and pinpricks of blood welled up between her claws and Adora’s hands, cherry red and glistening in the moonlight. Adora’s eyes were blown wide open, and her hair had slipped in locks and tufts, framing the strong bones of her face, sticking to her high and proud cheekbones, and rustling in the whispering breeze. Her hair was the only thing moving about her, she hardly even dared to breathe, staring at the girl in front of her seemed all she could do. 

The magicat’s fierce eyes softened and she sheathed her claws, clasping Adora’s hands in hers. The blonde, terrified that moving would destroy one of the few moments she saw - really saw - Catra, remained stock still except for slowly, gingerly running a thumb along the back of one of the other girl’s hands. Her mouth ran dry and her head was spinning. Blue and gold wisps of light, flakes of magical power and something far, far more old drifted in the air, casting the girls in a shimmering rainbow of different lights.

The moons, the wisps, the babbling groves all whispered magic, promised power, and in hushed tones spoke half thoughts.

_This is the hidden secret_

Catra was terrified - she had to be, how else could this feeling possibly make sense? All she wanted to do was dive into Adora’s arms, curl at her side, rest her head against her chest and press their foreheads together. She wanted to knead her hands against Adora’s chest, curl around her feet and sleep, and she most of all realized she wanted to wake up next to her every morning. 

_Stupid_ , she thought. _What could possibly be this terrifying?_

The longer she looked into those steely gray-blue eyes the faster her heart began to beat, the more horrified she became and the closer she needed to be. What did Adora do to her?

The blonde’s eyes were misty, sparkling with flecks of gold and pink, and the woods around them hummed with anticipation.

_Written in the dark spaces between moons_

Adora’s hand ran up Catra’s arm, to her shoulder and along her back until it reached the base of her neck, and blunt nails scratched behind her ears. She shuddered in contentment, closing her eyes and dipping her head low to allow the blonde a better angle for her ministrations. Her forehead clunked against the blonde’s and the jolt snapped her back to her senses.

She shoved Adora back roughly, “What the fuck do you think you’re doing?!”

There was no way Adora wanted her like that. This was all just some trick, some move to keep her wrapped around her little finger so she’d keep helping her. It had to be. 

Because the alternative - that Adora wanted her that close - was so much more terrifying? What if she really did want her back and it would never work out?

“I’m sorry! I just.. You were so close, and you’re so soft and I just -”

“You just _what_?" Catra snapped, her voice squeaked and her tail puffed out behind her. The magicat’s ears lay flat as she pressed a finger to the blonde’s chest. “You did this so you could calm me down, so you could keep me here and so I’d help you get what you wanted and you could leave me sooner. I’m so tired of your games, Adora.”

“Catra, _please_ , I swear to you I’m not playing any games. I need you!”

“You don’t need me, you never have! You just need someone to play _sidekick_ for you! That’s why you left me before, and that’s why you’re going to do it again!”

The magicat turned around and tore off at a dead sprint.

“Catra!” Adora broke out to a run to chase her, refusing to let her go again. 

The thick underbrush blurred into a gray-navy haze and thorny branches whipped at Adora, cutting through her uniform. Catra had previously been the acting bushwacker, chopping away the growth in front of them to make a walking room for them. But now, as she was on all fours running as fast as she could, she wasn’t making any real room for Adora. 

The blonde swore as a thorn whipped her across the cheek, drawing blood. She wiped at it with the back of her hand, still at a dead run to try to catch the magicat. Catra moved with all the preternatural grace of a huntress, dodging and weaving between branches so fluidly she seemed to be dancing. It was all Adora could do to belatedly twist through holes and turns that Catra effortlessly weaved between, tanking beating hits from the trees and whipping slashes from the razor sharp vines and brambles.

Finally, mercifully enough for Adora, Catra tripped over a rock and fell completely flat. She dove for the magicat, who was frantically scrambling to her feet, and wrapped her hands around one of her ankles.

Catra kicked at her wrists, frantically trying to escape. She drew blood, Adora’s and her own, indiscriminately as she tried to free herself from the vice like grip. Frenzied and incensed, adrenaline burning fire in her veins, Adora desperately pulled at the catgirl, crawling along the length of her body and pinning limbs as she went.

Finally, legs over Catra’s, stomach pressed against her back, and arms draped over Catra’s, Adora lay over her catch, triumphant. She slowed her breath, trying to catch it, as she contemplated what to do next. That’s when it hit her.

_Catra was crying._

Adora leapt off her, to the girl’s side, flipping her before pinning her down again, much more gingerly.

“Catra, please. Don’t go. I promised I wouldn’t leave you behind again. You have to trust me.”

“I can’t,” the girl whined, wrists clasped together over their heads in Adora’s hands. “I can’t let you hurt me again.”

Her breath hitched and snagged in her chest as she hissed and spat. “I won’t let you, I’ll break everything before I let you leave again. You can’t just… You can’t!” 

_This is the secret that keeps the stars apart_

Maybe it was the moonlight, the shimmering wisps around them, and the sound of Catra’s tears. Or maybe it was something more than The Whispering Woods, but Adora pressed herself against Catra, unsure of what she was doing and desperate to make things better.

“I won’t.” She spoke simply and confidently.

Catra’s eyes went wide as saucers, she paled and went limp in Adora’s arms, and the blonde brought her lips less than a hair’s width from the other girl’s. Their hips were flush together, their bodies slick with sweat as they drifted closer and closer to one another. 

Neither of them know who says it; the answer could change depending on the day, but they both know how they meant it.

“I guess we’re really doing this, huh?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Also!!!! I've never really written smut before but just based off the ending of this chapter I feel like some awesome porn could be written - if anyone wants me to do that, please tell me in the comments! I'm happy to write one up with trans catra as well as cis catra, depending on who wants what and how we want to do things! But... I kind of would like to, and if anyone feels like they'd read it just let me know and I'll put the link to that in the comments! Thank you for reading and have a great day!


	10. The L Word

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> HEY GUYS!! Originally I was going to make this a oneshot, but then I realized a chapter of gratuitous smut actually wouldn't really derail the plot too much, and I was like 'fuck it smut' so yeah! This entire chapter is smut, and only smut. If you don't wanna read that, which I totally get, another update will be coming out in the next couple days. Some of y'all commented on Razz's appearance in the last chapter, and I've actually gone and retconned that. She won't be appearing in the last chapter, or in this one. For the sake of smut.
> 
> So, yeah! Enjoy!!

“I guess we’re really doing this, huh?”

“I gue - mmph!”

Adora’s lips crashed down on her and Catra found her stomach _bottoming_ out in a way it hadn’t since Princess Prom, when she had plummeted down the edge of the cliff face Frosta’s castle had been built on. Like before, she felt every fiber of every muscle tense, felt the stiffening bolts of sensation darting up and down her spine, felt her heart pound and freeze in her chest. Last time all she could have done was bite back a scream, wrestle with the disorienting and sickening feelings to keep control of herself. And the only reason she had even been able to manage that was because it was a controlled incident.

But how could she control her best friend-turned enemy-turned best friend whose mind had been twisted like putty pinning her down and kissing her?

More importantly, Catra found herself wondering, did she even want to control it? 

The way her hands wrapped in around the back of Adora’s blazer, the sounds of their gasping breaths between kisses, the giddy smiles and teeth crashing against one another - the realization steamrolled over Catra with the same inexorable crash Adora’s lips had came down on her. No, she didn’t want to control this, didn’t want to stop it.

The way old wives would die in their sleep together, the way the dry brambles would not stop forest fires were the same ways Catra had always been able to refuse Adora. Like the darkness of the Etherian sky was always cut by the brightness of the moons, the same way worms on a hook always found themselves in a fish’s mouth. Catra could resist Adora as well as any trapped animal could still fight against its captivity - she had been doomed the moment she first saw those steely blue eyes, always meant to find herself right here at this instant, wrists pinned above her head, lip between Adora’s teeth, smiles on their lips and fires in their bellies as they whimpered and pressed against each other.

“Adora,” her voice was low and husky, and she strained against the other girl’s grip. “Please.”

The blonde’s eyes were dim and half-lidded, with her free hand she stroked Catra’s cheek, ran her thumb along the magicat’s lips, and caressed up and down her jawline. She was beaming, forehead against the other girl’s as she rubbed their noses together. 

She laughed breathlessly and her smile spilled wider; she was the fingers of sun reaching across the horizon, and like the first time she’d gotten away from the Fright Zone, Catra was still absolutely spellbound by what she was seeing. 

“Please what?” Adora’s question was innocent, her eyes sparkled with attention and warmth, and even though her pride was bruised for having to beg like this, she couldn’t bring herself to be mad at the beautiful girl looming over her.

“Please - um -” she fumbled over her words gracelessly, awkwardly shimmying her arms within the blonde’s grasp as she smiled sheepishly. “Please let my hands go. I could - uh - think of a better use for them.”

Burning heat came to her face as a blush tore across her cheeks. Catra lay still, looking deep into Adora’s eyes as the blonde slowly let her go. Adora’s body tensed and her arms shot out to her sides, and Catra realized with a pang that the girl straddling her was still terrified she would run away.

_Not this time,_ Catra resolved, crunching upward and jamming her lips against Adora’s, reaching for the sides of her uniform and grabbing the clothing tight, twisting her fists into the fabric as she desperately pulled the blonde closer.

Adora gasped and moaned; sudden bolts of liquid fire, smooth as the crack of a whip, shot through Catra. She quivered under the blonde’s weight, and desire coiled, heady and tight, deep in her stomach. She groaned lowly, smiling as she drank back the sounds the blonde made. She pulled Adora closer and closer, near every inch of their bodies rubbing and touching. Sounds of giddy delight filled the night air, and soon The Whispering Woods murmured its own quiet approval.

“I - told you - be - before,” Catra spoke between kisses, her raspy voice was muffled and her breath was hot with desire.  
  
“I need - you,” she paused, biting Adora’s lower lip,expertly sucking and pulling against it. Adora whimpered, legs spasming and shaking at Catra’s waist. The magicat arched into the blonde’s weight, grinding their hips together as they both groaned. Without warning, Catra stuck her hands up the other girl’s clothes, running her hands along the silky smooth skin underneath them, scratching the tips of her claws against the hard muscles of her back, purring as she spoke.

“More of you - A-dora.”

She tugged at the insides of the jacket and undershirt, mismatched eyes gleaming with desire. Adora’s lips parted in a silent _oh_ as she moved her hands away from Catra’s body, back to her own. Her shaky digits fumbled at the buttons along her jacket, and she sighed between her locked teeth in annoyance. She was terrified of moving too slowly, leaving the beautiful girl under her alone with her thoughts until she decided it wasn’t worth her time to be here. She breathed deeply, shuddering as she fumbled more with the buttons, finally undoing one of them.

_How stupid am I?_ Adora thought to herself, _Everything she said earlier… how long it took me to realize I want this, and now I can’t even undo buttons like a normal person?_

She lowered her head and flustered, burning tears sprang up behind her shuttered eyes. The blush along her face seared. For a moment she thought the sheer anxiety of it all, the pounding of her heart and the roaring blood coursing through her, the way all of her body seemed to demand _more_ would consume her entirely, the way any inferno inevitably made ash of its fuel.

Soft hands, such soft hands came to meet hers.

Catra was sitting up, no doubt to tell her to get bent, to get off her and let her go, to make fun of her for being so stupid she couldn’t even handle buttons. Adora flinched, ready for the girl to reject her, spurn her, for her to slip off the edge of the world the way she had always done, sure as candles flicker out in rain, promised like dead leaves falling from the vine, oathsworn as sirens reaching for sailors. Catra never dealt in absolutes, save for one: **she always left before someone could leave her.**

Adora had been the one exception to that, the one person she let under the walls, and the one person who really could have left her. And she did. It made perfect sense Catra was about to take her retribution. With a shaky breath, the blonde braced herself for what she knew was about to come.

The jacket fell from her shoulders.

“Help me take it off you, stupid!” Catra’s voice was playful and lighthearted, and Adora found herself shocked out of her reverie. She looked up at Catra, shocked.

The magicat’s playful smile changed instantly, she was concerned, wrapping her arms around Adora and rocking her back and forth. She propped her legs up, bringing her knees flush to the blonde’s sides as she pressed their chests together.

“I don’t actually think you’re stupid, you know. Are you like… okay?”

She sniffled, nodding from the crook of the magicat’s shoulder. Now it was Adora’s fingers that tangled in Catra’s clothes, in Catra’s hair. 

“I was afraid for a second that you’d have come to your senses and left me.” Her voice cracked and her eyes ran over before she spoke again, her voice a thick whisper. “I’m just waiting for you to realize I’m not worth it, that all I can do is leave and hurt you. You said as much and I -mmph!”

Catra shut Adora up; she’d heard enough. Pressing her lips against the blonde’s and working one hand up her shirt, the magicat skillfully worked the buttons of the blazer with the other. She pulled the sniffling, whimpering blonde closer to her, coaxing the sleeves of the jacket off her broad, muscled shoulders. 

The blazer blanketed across Catra’s thighs in a bundle, and when the kiss broke Adora burrowed into the crook of the other girl’s shoulder, sobbing breathlessly.

“You started sitting up and I - I - I -” she sucked down a wavering breath. “I thought that was really it, that I’d gone an-and ruined everything over again and you were going to run from me.”

“It’s not like that anymore, you…” Catra paused, pulling herself closer to the blonde, tangling a hand in her hair before she whispered, “you want me. Exactly like I want you, like I’ve always wanted you.”

Adora’s heart twisted with a pang in her chest, her stomach flipped and if she weren’t already on the ground, her knees surely would have just given out right then and there. 

“Always?”

If it had been any less heartfelt, it would have been cheesy. Catra had always hidden behind her cadence, twisting words, damming her intent behind walls so tall her vulnerability - her weakness - never spilled. Until that moment at the top of the Forge, when she told Adora in no uncertain terms that she needed her, she had kept every bit of her feelings for the blonde hidden away. But something had changed in the air, something had changed inside of her.

Maybe it was because she knew it couldn’t last, because she was expecting Adora to run away again once she got her memories, because she knew it would be over soon and she was trying to take everything she could get before then.

Or maybe she was trying to show Adora all of the reasons why she never should have left in the first place. 

In one smooth motion, with Adora clinging to her, arms and legs wrapped around her torso, Catra rolled over, gently lowering the blonde flush with the ground, slotting their hips together as she ran a thumb across the other girl’s cheek. Delicately, tenderly, with the awestruck fragility a florist handled the summer’s last rose, she kissed and wiped the blonde’s tears away, nipping and kissing up to her ear.

“Remember when we were young and I said I would never apologize for anything?”

The whisper was so quiet it could have blended with the forest behind them, and the hazy, tender fog of passion hung so thick in Adora’s mind that she could scarcely understand what the beautiful girl above her was asking. 

Uncertain and confused, she nodded.

“I take it back.” Catra’s hands were running down her sides, trailing light scratches as she pressed their foreheads together. “I’ve been blaming you for something you didn’t do - something you have no memory of doing. And I’m sorry for everything.”

In all her years knowing the girl, that had to be the first time she had ever heard Catra apologize, just like she had said. The suddenness of it, the intimacy of their bodies pressed together, the warmth of her skin, her smell, every piece of _Catra_ … it had all coalesced into one tsunami of beautiful emotion, and Adora found herself weeping quietly, yet again.

“I’ll always forgive you, Catra.” Adora’s eyes, glistening with tears, reflecting the moons above them, met Catra’s mismatched ones, and the magicat’s heart skipped a beat. Her tongue ran dry and she licked her lips instinctively. She murmured an inaudible _me too_ from above her, and her eyes flitted down to Adora’s slightly raw lips before she descended and pressed hers to them again.

Adora heaved another sob, gasping and arching into the kiss with a whimper, pulling Catra closer to her and whispering _more, more_ when the girl above her would break away for a breath of air. She ground her hips against hers, shuddering as she felt the stiffening bulge in the other girl’s pants. Liquid fire pooled in her stomach and she felt drunk on the taste of Catra; her head spinning and her body suddenly too warm. She moaned stutteringly, and the magicat grabbed at her hips possessively, trailing her claws hard enough to just barely break the skin.

_“Fuck!”_

Adora’s cry rang out in the clearing, and the whispering voices within the groves echoed the sentiment.

Frantic, desperate, clawing at the other girl’s clothes as she writhed and whimpered, the blonde made it clear that her eloquent statement was more than just an exclamation.

No, Catra realized as white hot arousal ripped through her body, it was an imperative.

Adora wanted her.

Proof of that, no matter how many times she could get it, never failed to make her hairs stand on end with ecstatic joy, never failed to pull her lips back into a beaming grin, and certainly never failed to encourage her to redouble her efforts.

Petting up and down the girl’s body, she squeezed at her still clothed breasts, running her hands down between the two of them and pressing her fingers between the other girl’s legs, amazed she even got to do that. Adora _bucked_ underneath her, arching into every touch, whimpering with every movement Catra made. A fiery blush painted the blonde’s face, which was covered in tiny droplets of sweat, and the dried tear tracks spiderwebbed dully across her glowing, milky skin.

“Catra, please,” the blonde keened, squirming underneath the other girl. “Off. Take them off.” She raised her arms over her head, punctuating her request, wide eyed as she stared at the girl above her.

This was terrifying, Catra realized belatedly, but there was no place else she’d rather be. Desire and fear pooled in her stomach, an unfamiliar and heady cocktail. She slipped Adora’s shirt off, and gasped at the sight of her, glowing in the light of the moons.

Wrapping her arms around the blonde and setting to work on the clips to her bra, Catra trailed kisses from where her jaw met her earlobe down to her collarbone, where she nipped and sucked and licked, gauging the blonde’s responses to each.

She lapped at the hollows between Adora’s collarbone and trapezius, murmuring how beautiful she was before sucking at the skin along the bone, hard enough to leave a mark. The blonde twisted and groaned, working a hand behind Catra’s head to push her further toward the skin.

“Bite me~” she moaned, jutting herself toward the mouth working at her skin.

_So she’s a bit of a masochist._

Catra sunk her teeth around Adora’s collarbone, fangs penetrating the skin with a delicate series of wet pops as the blonde writhed and moaned underneath her.

“So beautiful, so so so beautiful,” she whimpered, tangling her fingers in Catra’s mane as the girl left deep welts, hickeys, and cuts all along her collarbones.

Finally, mercifully, the clasps on her bra came undone. Adora shrugged out of the garment as Catra smoothly pulled it off. Bringing her hands back to the sides of Catra’s head, she gently tugged at the magicat, urging her toward her exposed breasts.

Catra’s jaw slacked at the sight of them. Sure, she’d caught glimpses of them in locker rooms, or seen their outlines through Adora’s clothes, especially when she would sleep in her camisoles and boyshorts. With every stolen glance, her hands had ached to rest against their curve, her fingers had twitched and she had desperately wondered what it would feel like to roll Adora’s nipples between her digits, and her lips had itched with the need to press up against her skin. Every time, guilt had set in immediately after such a thought, and the magicat had clamped down on all of them, pushing Adora away until she could get a hold of herself. 

But now, drinking in the blonde’s exposed beauty, sweat-honeyed, beautifully toned, and so, so curvy, Catra could bring herself to no shame, to no self-disgust, to no possible reason to push Adora further away for even just a second. No, stripping her had come painfully; it had been another moment that she could not press herself up against the other girl, had left her feeling desperate to touch more of her for those few moments.

Her hands ran up the blonde’s sides reverently, palms ghosting over the pink of her areolas as they came up to cup her face. Adora shuddered and gasped, arching into the touch before whimpering in disappointment as Catra’s hands rode further up her body.

“Holy fucking shit, Adora.” 

Catra’s voice was husky with desire, and she crashed over the blonde like a hammering wave. Her hands kneaded at Adora’s breasts, and their tongues swirled together in a searing kiss. Adora mewled, pressing against the blonde; Catra growled and groaned lowly in response, gasping in time to each gyration of the blonde’s hips. 

“ _Fuck,_ ” Catra sighed, “you’re so gorgeous.”

“I never thought I’d get to look at you. Not like this.” Catra murmured in a half prayer, and white hot fire burned through Adora as the other girl trailed pecks and nips from her cheek down to her neck, endowing it with a bruising kiss as she worked her fingers between the blonde’s legs. Adora pressed her hips against Catra’s fingers, moaning and arching her back. 

“All yours only yours only - oh _Catra_ \- only you… need you need you need you, Catra.” Adora was babbling and moaning wantonly, slinging one arm around Catra’s neck and working at the stiff mountain in her pants with her other hand, Catra yelped and moaned, grinding into the touch.

When the magicat pulled her lips away from her neck, a trail of dark bruises and bite marks trailed across the blonde’s collarbones and neck, and she smirked in satisfaction. The girls were still touching each other, petting and jerking between their legs, as their eyes met once more.

“You look so much better,” Catra paused, moaning and pressing herself closer to Adora with a purr, “with all these marks that say you’re _mine._ ”

She pinned Adora’s hands to the ground, pressing the stiffness of her erection against the hollow between the blonde’s legs, grinding their hips together as she _attacked_ her breasts with her tongue and teeth.

A quivering spasm rippled across Adora’s body, and Catra smiled against the soft pink nub in her mouth, sucking and running her tongue along it as the blonde’s encouraging moans filled the air around them. The blonde propped one of her legs up, bringing her thigh flush with space between the other girl’s legs, pressing and rubbing against it as Catra gasped in shock and pleasure.

Grinding against Adora’s leg, she kissed a searing trail along her chest and ribs, down her stomach and to the border where her pants met her waist, nipping along the line between the two. Adora yelped, desperately bucking her hips - _she needed Catra_ \- so badly it felt like if she waited even a single moment longer she would burn up from the inside and die. Her hands in the girl’s hair, tangled and twisted, she desperately pushed at her head, begging her to kiss her at her deepest, most sensitive core.

Catra’s smug grin erupted against her milk white skin, and she looked up at Adora, tail flicking and humming as she spoke, “Eager, aren’t we?”

Adora nodded frantically. “Catra, please! I can’t take any more, please please please, I need you.”

Butterflies twisted in her stomach, again - Adora _needs_ her. 

“Keep saying that. Keep begging me.”

Shaking her head fervently, nodding feverishly, begging in chants and prayers for more of Catra, Adora’s hips bucked and swung as Catra slowly undid her belt, snaking it through each of the loops of the belt buckles as painstakingly slow as she could manage, savoring the moment. 

“Please, Catr-ah! I’m going to lose my mind!”

The belt came off, and Catra set to work on the button and zipper with her _teeth_ \- Adora cried out, moaning at the sight of Catra’s head between her legs, at the feeling of her weight working down her core, in anticipation for whatever would come next.

Catra held a single finger up, moving to undo the blonde’s boots, practically tearing them off before she ripped away her pants and boyshorts, leaving Adora in her purest self exposed to the world. Glistening pink folds glittered in the night lights, and the golden wisps of magic floated in the clearing all around them, framing Adora’s naked body in the most breathtaking light she’d ever seen. 

And now it was Catra who was absolutely desperate, who couldn’t wait even a single moment longer for fear of losing her mind, Catra who was diving over Adora with fervent need, Catra who spread Adora’s legs and shuddered at the sight that was waiting for her there, the smells waiting for her. 

If she had known much about spices, she would have said Adora smelled like cloves and cinnamon mixed with rosewater and vanilla - something spicy and earthy and _sweeter_ than she could have possibly imagined. She had to have a taste, couldn’t imagine a single instant more without her lips against Adora’s.

“You’re a goddess,” she whispered, tail flicking at her legs, eyes half lidded with desire, mouth watering in anticipation for what she was going to do. Her eyes flicked upward to look at Adora, and her heart dropped in her chest.

There the blonde was, hand pulling at the back of Catra’s neck, she was leaning forward in a half crunch, peering over the twin mountains of her beautiful, milky breasts, across the smooth planes of stomach, to watch Catra. Her nose was wrinkled, she was smiling shyly and biting her lip, her eyes shone with need as she looked at the other girl, looked at her and right through her like she was clear water.

Catra descended on her, licking exploratorily at first, probing to see what Adora liked and didn’t like, refining her ministrations with each gasp, each jerk of her hips, each beautiful moan that escaped the girl’s lips. One of Adora’s hands remained planted at the back of Catra’s head, urging her on, and the other was at her side, and she was reaching for something.

Catra found it - her clit. 

Adora _exploded_ in blithering moans, rolling her hips erratically and babbling praises for the girl whose head was between her legs. She jammed Catra’s head down against her lips so fiercely the brunette could scarcely breathe at times. 

The intoxicating, heady taste of _Adora_ swirled in her mouth, and she realized that this was what she had been craving for years. Every single time Adora had pinned her down in a sparring match, every time they’d woken up together and her fluttering heartbeat had mixed with ribbonettes of tightly coiled heat in her stomach what she’d really wanted to do was kiss her, taste her. She had known of the saying ‘bodies are temples’ but never really believed it before.

Scratch that.

She had always believed it, but only about one person. Adora’s body was a temple, Adora’s body was the place she wanted to worship. 

And so, breathless and pressed up against her, Catra guzzled down the other girl’s taste, licking and lapping and _sucking_ at her swollen clit, moaning into Adora’s slicked folds as she desperately fucked her. When she slipped a finger inside of the blonde, gently and slowly, she _sobbed_ and arched against her, pushing the finger all the way in.

“Oh - _f-fuck_ , Catra, I… I think something’s - ahh! - going to happen!”

Adora’s voice was frantic, at loose ends as she pushed against the magicat.

“More f-f-fingers, please. A-and I want - ah! - oh _shit_ to h-hold your ha-ha-ha-!”

Catra, nodding and moaning against Adora’s lips, took the blonde’s free hand in her own, slipping another finger inside of her. Careful with her sheathed claws, she thrusted and turned her fingers until she found that hidden node deep inside of her, working against it with her fingers in a smooth _come hither_ motion. Adora, despite her mounting incoherence, managed to (perhaps by luck) work one of her lower legs underneath Catra’s stomach and hips, pressing itself up against the hardness in her pants. Adora gasped and quivered as she felt it, and Catra groaned low and needy against Adora, grinding against her bare leg desperately.

“C-C-Catra,” Adora gasped, jerking and quivering, voice and muscles tightly coiled, “I lo - _oh my gosh_ \- love you.”

Catra groaned and whimpered against Adora’s lips; her tongue, her fingers, her hips broke into arrhythmic, jerking movements as she nodded against the other girl. Tears streamed freely down her face, mixing with Adora’s slick wetness. Ecstatic tensions pooled in her body, and Catra realized her own orgasm was about to come. 

When Adora came, she screamed Catra’s name so loudly the trees rustled and the creatures of the night howled alongside her. The scream, the way she pulled Catra further into her, the sounds Adora made, babbling and crying and praising the girl between her legs left Catra desperate, with warmth pooling in her stomach and beads of precum puddling in small splotches inside of her leggings.

Pulling her fingers out of Adora, she found them covered in cum, which she eagerly lapped and sucked at, legs shaking as she moaned.

“You taste so fucking _good_ , Adora.”

“I want to taste you, too, you know, Catra… I mean, if that’s… like, okay for you?”

Adora asked that so awkwardly, and in her giddy post orgasm haze, Catra couldn’t help but laugh a little.

“Of course you can, dummy! I know it’s weird for some girls, but… I’ve always kind of liked what I have,” she smiled shyly, easing off of Adora’s naked body.

“Good,” her voice was husky and low as she rolled over, pinning Catra beneath her. “That’s what I like to hear.” 

Catra gasped and her features settled into a pout as she whined, “Why do _I_ always end up on the bottom?” 

Adora’s eyebrow arched and her lips pulled back into a shit-eating grin. Her grip around Catra’s wrists tightened, and the girl flinched, ears flattening. 

“You’re complaining? I’m not stupid, Catra.” The blonde leaned close, trailing her tongue at the edges of Catra’s ears, squeezing her wrists even tighter. Her grip was bruising as she whispered in the other girl’s ear. “I can _feel_ how hard you still are.”

“If you really don’t want me on top of you, say so. Right now.”

Catra swallowed thickly and whimpered, but remained silent otherwise.

Adora’s half lidded eyes loomed over hers again as she pulled back. A sensual smile had worked its way to her face, and she took one of Catra’s hands in hers, pressing it to her cheek. “That’s what I thought, kitten.”

Catra’s eyes were wide as saucers; she was absolutely mesmerized as she stared at the nude blonde straddling her.

“Now, let’s get you out of these clothes,” she _purred,_ tugging at Catra’s shirt with one of her hands.

A pregnant silence passed, and the brunette coughed delicately.

“Ahh… Adora, you have to, um, let my other arm go so I can take it off…”

“Oh.” She chuckled nervously, unpinning the other girl. “Right.”

Catra giggled, stripping out of her shirt and bra while Adora stared wide-eyed. Her breasts were small, perky, and athletic, and the blonde immediately focused on them. 

“You… I… wow, you’re literally just so gorgeous,” she blurted ineloquently, ghosting her hands up Catra’s sides, cupping them over her breasts. Kneading the soft mounds, Adora leaned over her hands and captured the brunette’s lips in a tender, delicate kiss. Catra moaned into the blonde’s mouth, and she hungrily drank in the sounds of her pleasure, groaning lowly in response. Adora worked her hands down to the magicat’s leggings, tugging at them. Catra lay herself flat on the ground and cocked her hips up, allowing the other girl to pull them off while she blushed and looked the other way.

“Hey, Adora?”

The blonde’s head snapped up and she tilted it questioningly, “Yes?”

“I um… I said it back at the time, well… I guess spelled it,” she started, scratching the back of her head awkwardly, eyes darting in every direction save for the blonde’s. Adora’s eyebrows did that infuriating thing again as a smirk broke out on her face. When Catra’s eyes finally met hers, indignation flashed behind them. The blush on her cheeks deepened, and she bristled at the girl between her legs.

“Well-well, now I’m not gonna say it! You already know where I’m going!” She was yelping, swatting at the other girl’s hair poof and crossing her arms as she spoke.

“I have no idea what you mean,” Adora said, putting on her best innocent face (which, considering the blonde’s negligible ability to act in any way, amounted solely to a slightly less intolerable version of her smug face).

“You’re a terrible actor.” Catra deadpanned, “buut, I guess I… love you anyway.” She grumbled, mumbling over the last few words shamefacedly.

Adora’s eyes glittered with emotion as she leaned over the girl, smiling. “I love you so - _wait, you spelled it? How?!_ ”

Catra’s ears flicked in embarrassment, “Well, you know… While I was,” she pointed downward, to the ground, “ _d_ _own there_ and stuff?”

Understanding dawned on the blonde, and her lips made a very small _oh_ shape. 

“Oh my god, that’s so cute!”

“S-shut up!” 

Catra swatted at the other girl, again. Her lips puckered in another pout, and her ears flattened over the back of her head as she mumbled.

  
“Just… hurry up and take my clothes off, okay? You got me all horny…”

Adora giggled, acquiescing to the other girl’s demands and smoothly stripping away her leggings, exposing her to the open air.

_I’d thought it would have been a little weird for her to have a penis_ , she mused absentmindedly, _but it… fits with the rest of her._

Catra was soft down there, at least at first. When Adora poked at it with a single finger, the magicat snorted and murmured a soft _you’re such an idiot_ under her breath. 

“I am not dumb! I’ll prove it to you!” Adora’s cry was positively affronted, and she huffed as she grabbed hold of Catra, experimentally licking at her head. 

The magicat shivered, lines in her neck going taut. She bit the back of one of her arms, moaning into it as her eyes fluttered hazily. 

_So she definitely likes that._

Adora wrapped her fingers around the base of it, and swirled her tongue around the tip. Catra swore under her breath, arching her hips toward the blonde as she worked her tongue down the length of it. She was at half mast now, and getting harder as Adora took her tip into her mouth and sucked, still swirling her tongue. 

Catra hooked her legs around the blonde’s shoulders, murmuring encouragement as she lovingly pet the blonde’s hair. 

“You’re so - _mother of moons_ \- good _ah_ at t _h_ _aat_ ,” Catra’s tongue lolled out of her mouth, and her eyes were slightly crossed as she looked down at the girl between her legs. 

Adora hummed and took one of Catra’s hands, wrapping the other around her shaft and fitting her lips over the remaining portion of the shaft, sucking and swirling her tongue around the sensitive head. Catra quivered and bucked, thrusting into Adora’s mouth and squirming as the blonde worked her closer and closer to her impending orgasm. 

Catra yowled and dug her nails into Adora’s hands, hard enough blood was beginning to pool at the beds of the pricks. Adora shuddered, the pain left heat pooling in her belly, and she rubbed her thighs together, grinding herself between them.

In much the same way Adora herself had done earlier, Catra moved one of her legs under the blonde for her to grind against, and she hummed her appreciation as she humped at Catra’s leg.

“Holy shit,” Catra keened, pressing herself into the blonde in every direction she could, “you’re fucking beautifuu- _uhh_!” 

Her orgasm washed over her like a tsunami, unexpected and overpowering. Her toes clenched as she cried out, and her cock pulsed in Adora’s mouth. The blonde shuddered as the taste of _Catra_ flooded her mouth. The girl’s juices were shockingly sweet and mild compared to what she’d heard it could taste like, and she found herself gulping it down without hesitation.

“S-s-orry!” Catra yelped, sitting up and looking down at the blonde. “I should have said something, I just.. You were so beautiful and you were grinding against me and - you - and I… I just…”

“Don’t be, it’s okay, I’m hardly complaining.” Adora’s smile was positively lecherous, and her eyes were glazed over with desire. “I can think of a way you can make it up to me.”

She was crawling over Catra now, slow and steady, and she lowered her hips against the brunette’s, slotting her slit over the throbbing, wet hardness.

“Can I?” She asked, rocking her hips against Catra, waiting for permission.

The magicat nodded feverishly, resting her hands at both of Adora’s hips in anticipation as the blonde slowly, carefully lowered herself down.

The girls sighed, overwhelmed by the sensation of one another so, so close. Catra marvelled at Adora’s tightness, her warmth; and Adora was amazed by how full and complete she felt with the other girl inside of her.

“I’m gonna start - _ahh_ \- moving now, ‘kay?” Adora was out of breath as she spoke, and she cupped Catra’s cheek tenderly.

Catra leaned into the touch, kissing the heel of Adora’s hand as she nodded, “ _Mmmmhm_ , need you, Adora.”

The blonde rocked her hips back, grinding against Catra’s hips as she rode her, moaning. Her hands found their way to Catra’s breasts, and she busied them teasing her breasts and pinching her nipples. Catra bucked and thrusted, yelping underneath her as she slid her arms under Adora’s and up to her chest, reciprocating.

Adora leaned into the touch, bracing a hand against the ground as she drew closer to the brunette under her. 

_By spirits, her eyes._

Mismatched gold and blue had never seemed so beautiful. Adora realized the world outside of Catra still existed, not because she had looked around her, but because the way the moons glittered in her eyes left her feeling dizzy and awestruck as the night she had first seen them, sneaking out of the Fright Zone Children’s Conditioning Center with Catra on a clear and cloudless night.

“Remember when we - we - _oh fuck, Catra_ ,” Adora moaned as the magicat’s claws trailed up and down her sides, “the first n-night we sa- _aaw_ the moons?”

The magicat, moaning and squirming underneath her nodded, “ _Mmmmmyeah_ ,” she purred.

“The moons - _fuuuuck -_ that night couldn’t _possibly_ compare to how - _oh, Catra_ \- gorgeous you are.”

Adora sunk low, embracing the girl underneath her as her walls clenched and shuddered. She was getting close, and she was babbling as she kissed along Catra’s jaw and neck, up and along her ears and down the hollows of her collarbones, twisting and bending as she bucked and rocked her hips, rhythm totally foreign as the weight of her impending release loomed over her. 

Adora cried out and moaned wantonly, and Catra’s mewling joined her.

“Fuck, _Adora_ , I think I’m going to - _Adora!_ ”

The blonde nodded, frantic as she murmured _me too_ over and over in the other girl’s ear. Catra thrusted from under her frantically, sitting up just far enough to wrap her arms around the other girl as she plunged into and out of her at a punishing speed. Adora groaned throatily, pounding against the girl under her as she neared climactic rapture.

**I love you I love you I love you**

They babbled to each other, chattering and quivering. The whole of the world narrowed to the tangle of their limbs, and even the trees behind them rustled the words they cried out to each other as orgasm finally came for them both.

With a cry, Adora came, all shuddering walls and spasming legs as she grabbed at Catra’s waist and _squeezed_ bruisingly tight. The magicat gave a few more thrusts of her own before sobbing, her head buried in Adora’s shoulder as she spurted deep inside of her.

Adora gasped and sighed, smiling as she looked down at the girl beneath her. 

“By the spirits,” she panted. “You’re incredible.”

“I barely did any of the work!” Catra shouted, playfully batting at the blonde, “next time I wanna be on top, and you can tell me how incredible I am then!”

Adora smiled softly, resting her hands at Catra’s cheeks, kissing her forehead and nose as she murmured softly. “I love you so much.”

Catra nipped at her hands, pecking all along her cheeks and kissing her lips through a smile.

“I love you too, dummy.”

Adora rolled over, disentangling from Catra with a sigh. She lay on her back, arms open as she urged the magicat to come closer.

“Snuggle up, kitten. It’s dark out, and we should get some rest.”

“Ugh, fine. This is just because you’re warm, okay? It’s not because I like you or anything.”

Adora laughed, and Catra found herself joining as she slid into the blonde’s easy embrace.

“No,” she smiled. “It’s because you _love_ me.”

"Shut up and hold me, you weirdo."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> HOOOOOO boy this took some work, 3K words yesterday and 3.3K today. Back on friday I did a full 4K too. So I'm totally exhausted, but this should be worth it. Smut is always worth it. And so is Catradora. And so are you guys. 
> 
> BIG BIG BIG THANKS TO PWIPWIPOO FOR BETA READING
> 
> also me and some friends are setting up a writer's discord! Primarily She-Ra focused but open to other fandoms; share your writings, brain storm with other writers, make collaborations or just gab about your fics and poems, let me know if you're interested (my discord code is Monika#5599) and once we finish making the server I will go ahead and let you know/add you to the group!


	11. Breaking Up

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Im so sorry for taking so long for such a short update - i just worked 6 days in a row and more are coming, but I'm hoping to have a more substantial post in the next few days. In the meantime please accept my very meager and humble offering.

_This is Thaymour_.

The smell of death reeks through the air. Plumes of steam hang in low clouds and billows of dark smoke rip through the air, carrying the pungent stench of burning bodies. Hovels crumble as grenades, tank shells, and laser beams bombard the town. Children, half buried in rubble, cling to their playthings and beg for help as fire creeps across the debris. Militia fighters, maimed and dismembered, cling to their wounds, their limbs, their viscera, and call for their mothers. The shambles of the town festival have become small islands of cover that people of all species and age huddle for cover.

Soldiers of the Horde, faceless and towering over the carnage, slaughter everyone in their way as they rampage through the town. Agony screams through Adora’s muscles as she trembles, propped on an elbow as she stares up at the face of her best friend. 

_Catra, this isn’t right. I know you’re not a bad person. I know this isn’t you. I can’t go back, come away with me. Please._

The snarling face of the girl she loved. Sanguine grace as that lithe, beautiful body twists and jabs. An electric prod shoots splintering agony shooting through her nerves, and when she looks at herself there sword in her hand, a battlecry on her lips.

There is no control, no mercy, Adora watches from the backseat of her own mind as she lumbers between tanks, crushing steel with her bare hands like if it were paper. And the gunners…

Well, if she rends stel like paper, what do bodies tear like?

That’s what she wonders as she watches strong hands that are not her own dislocate bones with the wet _squelch_ of boots in the mud, as her one time comrades call for favorite drill instructors and the dying cry Hordak’s name, and when she sees Catra...

_Catra._

She closes the distance between them with preturnatual speed; her legs flex and her hips twist as she drives a hand forward, palm open as she hammers the heel of it against a delicate neck. 

Catra sputters and claws at her throat, and marks deep enough to break her skin ooze crimson as she drops to her knees, windpipe shattered by the brutish might of She-Ra. The girl, writhing and choking, mouths Adora’s name near-silently, and the tiny vessels in her eyes rupture as she _wars_ against her own body just to stay alive. Tears of blood trip from her eyes and her lips turn a gruesome purple. Her neck, distended and purple, has swollen grotesquely. A voice that is not her own sadly remarks the girl should have come with her. 

When Catra stills, eyes glazing over in death, all that remains is the sword, the righteous fury, the dust and din of battle.

And the legion of dead comrades that follow. 

* * *

“Wake up! Adora, you have to wake up!”

Gasping awake from her sleep, blindly flailing as she rises, the blonde snaps to the present, crying Catra’s name.

“Adora, Adora, hey hey hey, shhh… It’s okay, I’m here, just look at me okay?”

Dirt mats in clumps at her shoulders and back from the field Adora recalls they fell asleep in, her eyes glitter in the moonslights, and her hands knead and trace a familiar and comfortable pattern across her arms.

“You had a nightmare. It’s okay now, I promise.”

The magicat’s hands come down to the blonde’s and her eyes follow the movement.

_Oh._

Catra was naked. The memory of the night prior trickles back to her sleep addled mind, and she dumbly stares at the magicat as she murmurs something indecipherable. Her ears are ringing and the weight of a sword teases at the edges of her hands. Something is terribly wrong.

_No, someone._

Someone is wrong, and it’s her.

“-ow you ne-r… -alk about it bu-.... **I love you and I don’t want you to do it alone.** ”

Those are the words that cut through the haze, and Adora realizes with a pang that Catra has made a horrible mistake.

“Well maybe you shouldn’t!”

The reply comes out sharper than she meant for it too, sounding much more a venomous accusation than the terrified whisper she had meant. And when the beautiful girl recoils, wounded eyes and tensed shoulders, the voice in her head that sounds like Shadow Weaver, the one she can never quite stamp out crows in vindication.

_You can never stop hurting someone you are close to. You need to take control of this before you destroy her._

Her heart hangs heavy in her chest as she looks at the girl, awkwardly shoving a pile of clothes toward her as she speaks. “Look, Catra, I… we’re both at our wits end, and there’s so much going on and I…”

Catra won’t say what she’s thinking. Her quietude and proud posturing give nothing away, but her eyes are pleading for Adora to not say what she already knew was coming.

“Catra, last night was a mis-”

Catra’s sharp laugh rings through the clearing. She stands up, looking down at the blonde as she dresses herself.

“We both know you wanted _this_.” She gestures to herself, setting Adora’s blazer over the girl’s shoulders and bending low to pick up her own shirt. “You’re afraid now. About what it all means. You’re terrified that you can’t give me what I want. And you know what, Adora?”

She cups the blonde’s cheek with her hand, tenderly rubbing her thumb over her cheek as she smiles.

“ _Y_ _ou’re right_ . You’re always going to choose anything and everything over me - it’s always the same with you. So you can take all your shit and get the fuck back to Brightmoon, find all your Princess _friends_ , and see which one of them can put your stupid memories back together again.”

Catra’s voice was dripping with venom as she ran a single claw down the side of Adora’s skin, hard enough to leave a red welt of a mark behind.

“So you’re…” Adora swallowed thickly, steeling herself and clearing her throat. 

_This is what you want_ , she reminded herself. _It’s worse for her if she stays_.

“You should go, Catra,”

The crickets chirp metronomically and Catra’s tinkling laugh chimes to their beat. She turns away, stepping gracefully into her pants, cocking her hips out as she does the buckles to her belts. The blonde follows suit, 

Branches snap and Adora neatly swivels on her feet, crouched in a low guard. She looks over her shoulder at Catra -

_Catra._

She’s lurched forward, poised and ready at Adora’s side. Even after what she just said, Catra was ready to protect her. A cold thrill twists and blossoms in her chest.

"Mara, dearie!” A foreign voice cuts through. A decrepit woman stands at the limen where the field meets the thicket of trees, leaning on her cane and beaming up at the blonde. “There you are! This is your wife?”

Catra yelps and jolts with surprise, and the magicat’s mismatched eyes flit to the side as she watches Adora with a spark of interest, and her eyes seem to ask _what are we?_

“Hold on,” Adora raises a hand up, “ _wife_? You’ve got it all wrong, I don’t have a wife!”

_Remember what you wanted, Adora._

“I don’t even have a girlfriend.”

Catra’s shoulders dip for a moment before she speaks up, waving a hand exasperatedly, “Yeah! And if I was married I could do _waaaaay_ better than her!”

“Eh? Ah, but this is Catra, isn’t it? Your wife?”

“ _Adora_ \- not Mara or whatever you said, you old hag - is definitely not my wife. Or even my girlfriend for that matter. Why do you know my name?”

Catra remained poised and low, standing between Adora and the strange old woman.

“And mine is Adora, so um… If you could, ah, just not call me Mara.”

An elbow found its way between the blonde’s ribs, and Catra hissed at her ear. “I just told her your name, you dumbass!”

The old lady smiled sweetly, “Ohh, this is the second first time!” She winked, and her smile grew another few sizes before she spoke again, gleefully. “Of course, Mara!”

Adora’s shoulders dip as she heaves a deep sigh. Catra snorts and pinches the bridge of her nose.

“Come, come! If this is the second first time you must be here trying to remember. Madame Razz knows the feeling,” she laughed, tapping at her temples. “We need to get back home, I have something to help you remember - and Swift Wind has been worrying sick about you! We will need to be quick, then. By the time the storm comes your wife will need you!”

“What storm? Seriously lady, I don’t have a wife! Stop talking about my wife!”

Madame Razz winks and looks at her meaningfully; her eyes gleam with mischief as she retorts. 

“Yet,” she says, as though it is the most evident thing in the world, “the tundra will reveal your hearts, sure as the desert will clear your minds. Now come, I have a secret for you! This way, hurry!

Adora stepped forward, only to be stopped by Catra’s rough grip around her arm and her hushed voice at her ear.

“I know you. You’re going to follow her, so I’m not leaving yet - I don’t trust this lady. I get that you don’t want me around, or whatever. But I’m _not_ about to let some dementia addled old bag off you in the middle of the forest. So let’s just get through this and then I’ll piss off like you wanted. Okay?” The magicat’s voice was venomous, and she sucked down a raggedy breath.

Eyes fixed on the ground, Adora nodded. 

“I thought after last night that you… Why are you doing this, Adora?”

“Let’s just go with her, I don’t see any other way I can get my memories back.”

She couldn’t look back at Catra, not after what happened. And she couldn’t stay here. She came to the woods to find herself, her missing time; and this seemed to be the only lead so far. The old woman, surprisingly nimble for her advanced age, set a brisk pace through the forest. With no way back, the girls went forward, back to the unfathomable woods in a terse silence.

Adora had always been like this, Catra decided. The kind of girl who put whatever obligation she felt she had over her own wants and needs. A perfect foil to her own self, the magicat realized. She had never been loyal to a task, a cause, or an idea; only the people - or one person, most accurately. Only to her.

And every time she ran off on another mission it left Catra picking up the pieces and trudging on after her. It only made sense that the pieces started including the bits of them caught in the crossfire since she left. 

Adora was always charging on to the next big thing, always finishing one task by the skin of her teeth before finding another cause to devote herself to. A workaholic, a control freak, and ultimately a defector prepared to walk away from everything she had ever known in the name of doing what she felt was right. And of course there was some part of her that couldn’t help but admire the blonde for all of that, but not when it came at the kind of cost that it did - when the girl would consistently turn down the things that made her happy because they’d get in the way of her doing what she felt she had to.

That’s the part that was hardest for her - watching Adora break both of their hearts again because she couldn’t find contentment where she was, working to change the world slowly. It always had to be now, had to be her, had to be anything except what it was. And so Catra tried to pull her back, tried to push back at her every time she sacrificed herself, but all it ever seemed to do was set the blonde further on her path of self sacrifice. 

The Woods had been treacherous, worse than last time. The trees stilled and animals raced off against the direction the trio had advanced. Catra felt it too, some strange, unnatural push telling her to get away from wherever they were going.

“Uhh…. are we sure this is the best idea? Something… feels wrong,” her voice cracked and she cursed herself for the display of weakness.

Madame Razz was panting, and her voice broke with exertion as she spoke, “Something is… wrong with Etheria. We must move quickly, the world needs… She-Ra.”

_And what does Adora need?_ Catra found herself thinking bitterly. 

They were supposed to look out for each other, they had only ever needed one another - and then the Sword happened. Adora had some cause other than clinging to her, some purpose other than protecting her. And what did Catra have then?

Nothing. 

The shell of the life they had built together, something meaningless and dull, something she had always believed they’d change together. And instead Adora had run away and left her alone. She had asked her to join the Rebellion, sure. But what choice was that really? Catra didn’t have some secret ultimate weapon that would have put her in their good graces, didn’t have some kind of ticket in. She was a cadet, plain and simple. A grunt expendable enough that she surely would have been imprisoned or worse. And Adora was so blinded by whatever promise that Sword seemed to hold that she just… didn’t care anymore. She got lost in being needed, lost in being a hero, in feeling like she could control everything and save people from getting hurt.

And in the process she ripped Catra’s heart out. Now it was happening again, and it was obvious even through the way she was pushing Catra away that it was killing her inside to do it.

“Adora, wait!” Catra lunged, grabbing Adora, who had made a point of walking far enough ahead to have avoided looking at the other girl. “This isn’t a good idea, something here is wrong. Even if you get your memories back you… Look, there’s a sword you used. Without it there’s nothing you can do. Why do you even want the memories back? You killed people, betrayed your home, you left me behind. You keep changing your mind - one moment you won’t leave me and the next I should go. You don’t want to betray the Horde but you’re conspiring with a witch in the woods - you’re not stable, can’t you see it?”

Adora’s eyes flashed colder as she broke from the magicat’s grip. “Our _mission_ as soldiers is to do what’s best for Etheria. If you’re so insistent on _distracting_ me that you can’t see I’m after that power to bring it back home, then you’re a fool, Catra.”

“But -”

Adora shoved the smaller girl, “But nothing! These memories are eating at me, and I need them back so I can sleep at night again! I keep asking you to leave because you keep getting in the way. You’re confusing me, manipulating me, just like Shadow Weaver!”

Catra shrank back as a thick, callused finger poked at her chest. Adora’s steel eyes were rimmed with tears, and her bottom lip trembled as she took another breath.

“And then when you get hurt it’s my job to fix it. I’m not interested in doing that anymore. Seriously, Catra just…” She shook her head, taking a deep breath. “Just leave,” two words, quiet as kept on her exhale, breathy and soft as the way she had said she loved her just the other night.

Catra turned and ran, leaving Adora and Madame Razz to press on toward the shape of a hovel between the trees.


	12. Capture

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey guys!! It's the one month anniversary since I started this fic, so I HAD to rush another update! After NINE DAYS WORKING IN A ROW i'm finally looking at getting 2 days off, which will hopefully also mean that I'll be able to get another chapter out.
> 
> HuGE shoutout to PwiPwiPoo who has been beta reading some of my chapters - their stuff is amazing and I really recommend checking out some of the things they write, they're the bomb dot com. 
> 
> I hope y'all enjoy! Don't hesitate to smash that kudos button (THANKS FOR 100 OF THEM) and comment!!

To say Shadow Weaver was pleased would truly be an exercise in understatement. She had been hoping to split Catra and Adora apart since they left, and had been painstakingly working on the means to orchestrate some kind of falling out between the two of them, a task that became increasingly daunting after certain _activities_ the night before. Why Adora would have lain with something as repulsive as that magicat baffled her, but the ultimate payoff - the crippled look of pain when Adora told the creature off had been well worth the disgust she had felt peering through the sight of her shadow spies. 

It was a shame, truly, that Adora had become wise to her manipulations in the past years, it had created many complicating factors in her goal to use She-Ra to overthrow Hordak and take control of his armies to capture the planet. But with the help of a certain Brightmoon Princess, an _alternative_ plan had been arranged; one that ended with Shadow Weaver defecting to the rebellion, using Glimmer as a puppet queen after the current one suffered an unfortunate ‘accident’, and the destruction of the Heart of Etheria and Galactic Horde at the sacrificial hands of the Queen and She-Ra, respectively. There had only been one loose end before she was able to progress further in her new scheme. 

Adora’s pet. 

But now that the girl had driven Catra away, it would be short work to pursue her, and find another use for the foul beast. Ever since he had relocated to the newly-captured Dryl, Hordak had been redoubling his efforts to find working First Ones tech, and in doing so he had ordered numerous laborer deployments to existing camps, and numerous Force Captains had been requisitioned to lead perilous and suicidal scouting missions. After Catra’s capture and reconditioning, she could be sent to one of the labor camps as a worker, or perhaps sent on a suicide mission. The Northern Reach gulags were always in need of workers, and it wasn’t like many of the laborers sent there ever came back anyway. 

Catra was bolting through the woods in the opposite direction of Adora. The hag in the woods was unaccounted for, and Shadow Weaver found herself regretting the fact that someone other than Glimmer would be restoring Adora’s memories. She would have to offer another example of the power that lay within magic to secure the young Princess’s apprenticeship, and such an act would have to come very soon. Hordak had been preparing armies to lay siege to the city-fortress of Bright Moon, assuring Shadow Weaver that some impending research would soon spell the end of the Whispering Woods, paving the way to the Horde’s complete victory.

The Black Garnet pulsed, and the witch’s saturnine laughter filled the cold chamber as she reached for her communicator, dialing the head of the Horde Justice Division, the branch of intelligence and wetwork specialists responsible for finding and returning any Horde Soldier who abandoned their post.

“Shadow Weaver! Hey, how’s it going? Any news?” A cheerful voice filled the room, and Scorpia, chipper as ever, filled the datascreen on the far wall of the chamber. 

“Force Captain Scorpia - I have located one of the deserters - Force Captain Catra. You are to capture her and return her to the Fright Zone for reconditioning.”

“Right away, Shadow Weaver! And can I just say, it is an honor to bring defectors such as Catra to justice in the name of Lord Hordak. I just hope we can find that traitor Adora again. I know you had some plans to erase her memories but it really does seem like no matter what some people are just made to be turncoa-”

“That is _enough_ , Force Captain. Return the deserter to me at once, I do not have time for idle chit-chat.” 

“Oh, um.. Of course, Shadow Weaver, ma’am!”

The Force Captain signed off with a wink, and the dark sorceress sighed. Some people were truly exhausting. 

A knock at the door caught the witch’s attention, and an incoming hail from Lord Hordak filled her datascreen with new input. Sighing, she hit the button to open the call, and feigned warm enthusiasm as the warlord’s visage filled her chamber.

“Greetings, my lord. We have located one of the deserters and I have dispatched a Force Captain to pursue her.” her voice was velvety warmth, and she bowed her head in feigned subservience

“The deserter Catra and your pursuit are no concern of mine, Shadow Weaver.” Hordak’s voice was harsh and icy, banging and screaming echoed in the back of his sanctum, and a young woman, aflame, ran across the background. “Your wasteful ventures have resulted in the theft of another skiff, and Adora - She-Ra - has abandoned her post again. Your misguided loyalties have resulted in another series of spectacular failures. Ones I cannot ignore… I have sent enforcers to your chamber. The Black Garnet is being repossessed, I have need of it in my new tests. You are hereby relieved of its possession and of your command.”

The witch’s eyes went wide - her plans would be ruined if she were taken now! Not now, not when the fate of Etheria hung so precariously.

“But, my lord, surely -”

“Surely _nothing_ ,” the warmonger snarled, teeth bared as he loomed over the screen. “Open the door, cede control peacefully, and you will be discharged with decorum and respect.”

He was lying, and she knew it. The last few years had been a cold war between the two of them, both a power struggle and an elephant in the room. Though she had done well to keep it from Hordak, it was well known amongst the cadets and a select few higher-ups that Shadow Weaver had her own machinations. Perhaps this really was just about wasting resources, about defying him. But if he knew that the baby she had coveted since birth was She-Ra, surely he must have come to have an inkling that she had been meaning to use her to overthrow him, hence his intervention before she could reclaim either of the deserters. Wondering if she would be executed or exiled, Shadow Weaver sighed in defeat, hunching and tucking her hands behind her back, tracing a runic command to her shadow spies out of the Supreme Commander’s view.

_Find Catra,_ she bade her spies.

“Of course, Lord Hordak. It has been my honor to serve you.”

“You shall serve me yet. Goodbye, for now, Shadow Weaver.” The creature spat, cutting the line.

Soldiers and enforcers, headed by Force Captain Octavia, entered the room, and when she was cuffed, Shadow Weaver did not put up a fight. 

“I’m sorry, my friend,” the Force Captain’s apology, whispered into Shadow Weaver’s ear, did little to dissipate her rage.

Catra had become far more vital to her machinations than she ever would have liked. Where mere moments ago she had been planning to kill her, she now was forced to come to terms with saving her. Now she needed Catra alive, if she could get her away from the Horde Justice Division, or maybe speak to her after her reconditioning, if she could get a hold of the magicat at any point in time… Perhaps the insolent creature would be of some assistance in getting her out of her probable imprisonment.

* * *

The trek through the woods had left Adora substantially more winded than she would have expected. After Catra had disappeared, she had run double time through pouring rain (when did it start raining?!) just to catch up with Madame Razz. With the shockingly brisk pace the woman had set she hadn’t quite had the time to catch her breath. Sharp pains laced up and down her ribs, and she crouched outside the hovel at the top of the hill, hands braced against her knees as she gasped for breath, fighting stinging tears, sopping wet and astounded at her own fatigue.

  
That, or maybe the agonizing twist in her chest was for everything she had done. Fucking Catra, telling her she loved her, and then telling her to go away the very next day. Perhaps guilt, like a thick weighted blanket, draped over her and left her heart heavy, and maybe there was a chance that the stones in her throat were because she missed her already, wished she could have wrapped her arms around her, held her hand as she marched through the unknowable grove.

One of these things was far more likely than the other, she had decided - obviously she had just gone soft. All those rest days back in the Fright Zone must have worked out to be enough to strip away some of her precious stamina, and she vowed to herself to train more and make up the slack when this was all over.

“Will you come inside, Mara, dearie? I have something for you to drink!” Madame Razz held the door to her home open, and smiled up at the blonde. Somehow, despite the sideways rain, the old woman had stayed completely dry. “You must be freezing, I have just the thing!”

Adora could almost hear her now, mistrusting and caustic despite her own exhaustion.

“Of course,” Catra would have panted, “let’s just trapse on into a stranger’s home and take any drink the old crone living in the middle of the forest that _literally none of our soldiers have ever returned from_ offers us! That just seems like a great idea to, you know, not die or anything.”

Catra would talk a big game, huff and insist she wouldn’t accept any hospitality, even when walking through the door. And then when the glasses came out she would have snatched the one from Adora’s hands, would have sniffed at it, would have grunted and brusquely remarked that she liked the blonde’s cup better and took the first sip. And then, when the concoction (hopefully) didn’t poison her, she would return it, saying she changed her mind, repeating the process with the other one. Because Catra and her always looked out for one another, and one of the ways she had always made good on their promise was by ensuring if anybody was poisoned it would be her and not Adora.

And also even though she wouldn't be caught dead admitting it, Adora always had known Catra liked her. Loved her.

And now… What did Catra feel now? Did she hate her for everything? Wasn’t it better if Catra hated her? If she wasn’t here to keep messing with her head? Wasn’t it better since neither of them was getting hurt by one another, even if they both were broken now? Is this what it had felt like before? In her missing time? What happened next for them, what now?

_Now nothing_ , she reminded herself. _You’re not what she wants you to be, you’ll just keep making things more confusing and awful if you stay close to her. No matter how much you might want her love, this is something you would ruin on accident if you hadn’t deliberately, Adora. So just don’t try, just let it go. Focus on what you can do, on taking power for yourself and taking control of the world around you._

“Yoo hoo, Mara! Please, it will help with your memory, so just be a sweetie and come inside, yes?” Razz yanked at Adora’s fingers, snapping her out of her reverie.

“Oh! Ah, um, uh! Of course, sorry!”

Even when she tried to close her mind to it, thoughts of the girl needled at her, inconvenient and prickling like the fat gobs of rain she had been dashing through. She was freezing now, all chattering teeth and shaking muscles, blue fingertips as she crossed the door’s threshold and sat at the cluttered table within the living area. Madame Razz hummed softly and set a kettle to boil.

“Have a blanket, dearie! You’re looking chilly!”

She could have sworn the woman’s voice came from her side, where the kitchenette was, but somehow the blanket had come from behind her. And was it just her but had the house somehow gotten dirtier since she had come in? The woman babbled at the kettle, and threw leaves and an assortment of roots into the steaming water. 

_Witch._

The woman she had followed all alone was a witch. Adora cringed, cursing herself for thinking this was a good idea. She heard stories about the witches, growing up - sorcerers whose connection to magic was not only some sort of arcane, but who had connected to the very planet under the tutelage of the Horde’s sworn enemy, the Princesses. Witches were responsible for terrible hexes and curses, summoning golems made from Etheria itself, wielding command over the elementals, brainwashing good soldiers… If the Horde was to be trusted, this would be a place of great and terrible danger. While the old witch sang and hummed quietly to herself she moved to get up and retreat, tiptoeing across the carpeted wooden floors of the hovel. 

Adora’s breath was measured and even as she delicately padded across the soft mats and boards; even a single creak could alert the witch of her escape attempt, and possibly cost her life. Moving at a monumentally slow pace, she came to the door, reached out to the knob, brushed her fingertips against the dulled and tarnished brass. She paused, considering the ramifications of each choice.

Leaving now meant she would have nobody and no place to go, and if the witch really did want to help restore her memories, that would be one less avenue by which she could regain them. If the witch knew how to track her, which she must if she had found her before, then leaving would be a moot point without backup or a means of transportation. And Catra had gotten a sizeable head start back toward the skiff… No, at this point the only real option she had left was to stay, and to see what the witch would do to her. She pulled her fingers away from the doorknob just in time for it to begin rattling.

The door burst open and Adora yelped, leaping back. Madame Razz came inside, carrying a steaming mug of liquid as she hummed to herself. Her chapped lips peeled out to an ear splitting grin, and Adora watched the scabs split on her decrepit skin. Blood dripped down to her teeth

“There you are, dearie! I got lost!”

She blinked and stared blankly, “Lost? Weren’t you just in the kitchen?” 

“Yes,” the woman nodded sagely, “life is full of such mystery, isn’t it, Mara?”

“I’m not Mara!” Adora huffed in annoyance, cocking her hips to the side and putting a hand on them, using the other to pinch the bridge of her nose.

_For such a powerful and terrifying threat she is just… not all there, is she?_

Adora laughed nervously, running a hand through her hair, taking care to avoid her pompadour. 

“Whatever,” she snorted, crossing her arms and tapping her fingers against them, “let’s just get this over with. Is this a potion? To help me remember?”

Razz ushered the blonde back to the table, scoffing and waving a hand in the air. “No, silly! It’s tea!”

“Ah, ahaha! Tea!” She laughed, feigning understanding. Hopefully she would learn what that was _before_ she drank it.

“You know what that is, yes?” Madame Razz looked up at her with confusion. “Ohhhh, what time is this again? Second first, or is this a visit? It can be so hard to remember…” the woman’s nonsensical remarks quieted to indecipherable muttering as she counted something on her fingers. 

Adora sat at the table, twiddling her thumbs and scratching at the surface of the simple wooden table, making tiny noises in parody of the scraping noise.

“ _Wreeeee Wraaaaagh_ ,” she whisper-shouted to herself, drumming her fingers against the plane.

“Aha!” Razz’s sudden cry startled the blonde, who fell out of her chair with a crash and a shout before immediately bolting back up, fists raised. 

The sound of the witch’s triumphant cry filled the hovel as she bellowed. “Hot! Leaf! Juice!” 

Adora spluttered and tilted her head, staring at the woman, wordlessly begging for context.

“Tea, silly! This is the second first, you haven’t a clue what tea is and you are too embarrassed to admit it! Tea is hot leaf juice!”

Adora exhaled shakily, sinking low to her chair as she laughed, waving a hand, eyeing Razz from the corner of her sight, trying to gauge if she was making a social faux paus as she spoke. “Ahhh, of course! Hot leaf juice! That’s a thing I’ve… _totally_ drank before, because it’s completely… normal.”

The old woman stared blankly, a smile plastered over her lips as she pointedly ignored the blonde’s obvious lie. “Drink up, dearie! Some of your friends from before will be here soon, as will your steed, Swift Wind!”

Adora sighed, deciding she would understand Razz’s inane chatter at some point other than this. She could still hear Catra’s caustic wit at her side as she took her first sip of tea.

* * *

The Whispering Woods were _creepier_ than Catra remembered, and the air was much cooler. Something terrible was coming, and it hadn’t been terribly hard to find which direction she needed to be going. All you really had to do was follow the huge stampedes of wildlife evacuating the forest, which was precisely what she was doing. 

It was, in fact, getting much colder as she pressed on, Catra decided. Despite the clear and bright morning, by midday the sky had turned a roiling gray. Bolts of red static lightning spiderwebbed between the clouds. The colors of the forest had washed out, and the calls of the animals had faded, replaced with fleeting cries as the creatures, large and small, fled the grove. Even the trees themselves had hushed their murmurs, muttering indistinctly save for one intelligible word - _run_.

Goosebumps had cropped up across her skin, ice cold thrills raced up and down her back, and she found herself wishing she had one of the big stupid jackets Adora always seemed to carry around with her. At least then there would be some insulation between her and the bitter cold. Dirty sleet fell from the sky, and the magicat yelped as hail pebbles needled at her, bouncing off her shoulders and head and striking the ground. Her tail frizzed and puffed as a particularly loud crack of thunder fired off, and when she saw the shadows within the groves start to move she finally took the aforementioned advisory of the trees. Tendrils of darkness crept toward her as she burst forward in a desperate sprint.

Shadow Weaver knew where she was.

That thought left her colder than the freezing weather. Chilled beyond any recompense, a shivering cry broke past her lips as bolts of terror, blindingly electric as any physical pain, raced up and down her nerves. The sorceress knew she had run with Adora, and she was surely blaming her for everything that had happened. If she let herself get captured, the witch surely would kill her.

Suddenly, she was still and on her back. Shaking her head dazedly, looking past the dark purple splotches and spinning mobiles of light, Catra realized she had run headfirst into something - no, someone.

Looking up - far, far up, she saw the Horde Force Captain’s sigil pinned to a chitinous, barrel chest. And beyond it, a strong jaw and terrifying, predatory grin. An amazonian woman, broad and powerful, with fearsome pincers for hands and a deadly looking tail stood above her. Shadow Weaver had help this time - the Horde Justice Division, an elite wetwork team responsible for locating and punishing defectors, deserters, and traitors. Headed by the former Royal House Scorpioni, and currently commanded by Scorpia, the department was renowned both for their undying loyalty to Hordak and their gruesome methods, being headhunted by them was all but a guarantee that you’d be returning to the Fright Zone in either cuffs or a body bag. 

_Oh fuck_ , the realization sank in. _Scorpia’s really here._

The magicat shuddered, turning to run.

Shadows boiled in the trees, fearsome and harsh, near invisible unless you had the eye for it, like Catra did. Thugs blocked her way, and subdued the magicat roughly.

“Radio back to base,” Scorpia laughed, “mission success! Drinks on me tonight, guys!”

The shadows rose and coiled, spelling words out against the trees.

_Horde betrayed us - have plan - wait for signal_

The shadows formed a silhouette, and one of Shadow Weaver’s spies stood, half behind the trees, saluting her.

What kind of mind games was the hag playing this time?

Scorpia's fist crashed down, her tail sprung forward, and the magicat sunk to the ground, unconscious and limp.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Let me know as well if you would be interested in a She-Ra centric, but all kinds of writers inclusive discord server! If enough people can DM me at Monika#5599 I think me and a few buddies will actually be setting that up!
> 
> Thanks so much for reading and for supporting this fic! It's been an awesome first month; here's to many more!


	13. Memories

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Adora gets her memories back, woo woo!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey guys I'm so sorry for the wait, this was a bit of a harder chapter for me emotionally. I spent some time working on getting a lot of different parts of this as not wrong as I could, especially all of the flashbacks in this chapter. The next chapter, possibly two, that I upload will probably be covering The Battle of Bright Moon, so it may take some time as well, but I feel like we're on course now for where I was imagining this fic going when the idea first hit me! So yay. Additionally, I've finally set up an Adora playlist as well as my Catra one, and I'll drop links for them at the top of the fic, just after our little introduction from Scorpia! They'll be the underlined, bolded versions of our girls' names.
> 
> Thank you so much to PwiPwiPoo for beta-ing most of this chapter before I ran off and just wrote the rest at like 3 am and posted it before they could finish lmao rip

Catra stirred, sore and pained, and groaned. The skies above the Whispering Woods were blackened, the ground was freezing, and she stared up at the muscular back of Scorpia, who was talking animatedly at her subordinates.

"You know, I really thought for all the work we did together trying to get that blonde back in the Horde she wouldn't just go and defect like that. People really surprise you, huh?"

"Uh, boss," one of the soldiers said, gesturing back at their groaning prisoner.

"Oh, shit, she's waking up! Get clear guys, I'm gonna sting her again!"

_Whap!_

* * *

**[Catra](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/3dmXe9dvYNbQ1xstPTTOqS?si=-Yd7cwJlTu2AzE6iQ-eG4Q)** and **[Adora](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/2DJY7ctiIuHRxalh5JpQnd?si=IFXktvoPRUyqls4V42Ro2A)** lay in bed together, one at the head and the other at the foot of the bottom of their shared bunk beds. Their bare legs met and tangled in the center of the bed and the barracks were empty and quiet but for their idle chatter occasionally breaking the silence. Catra was clawing pictures of the two of them into the cold steel at the sides of the bed frame, and Adora was doodling on herself with a marker she had found earlier in the day.

“Hey, Adora?” Catra’s eyes focused on the blonde, head tilting to look at her.

“Yes, Catra?”

“Why did you end up naming me Catra? It’s not exactly a…” the magicat blushed, arms crossed, “normal name, or whatever. You know, for a boy and stuff.”

Adora’s laugh filled the room, and Catra’s heart skipped a beat.

_She’s making fun of me!_

“I’m sorry, you don’t have to laugh at me! Forget I even asked,” Catra huffed, tensing up.

Raising her arms placatingly the blonde half laughed as she said, “No, silly! I’m not laughing at you. It’s just, like, kinda awkward to say out loud. But when the Horde found you they’d been planning on putting you in with the other cadets and drawing a name for you like everyone else. And when I met you we just like, bonded? And after I convinced Shadow Weaver to take you in, she couldn’t really think of a name for you, and I kind of thought you were a girl and -”

“Wait, wait, wait, wait!” Catra interrupted the blonde, yelping and bolting upright; mismatched eyes were wide open, staring unblinkingly at her. Adora sat up, looking at the magicat with confusion. “You thought I was a _girl_?” 

“I’m sorry! I know, it’s weird I just…” she sighed and pinched the bridge of her nose, “I mean, with the long hair and how all kids just kind of look the same that young and everything else and I… I mean, I thought you were? I’m so sorry, Catra!” 

The magicat relaxed, laughing slightly. “It’s… okay, Adora. I kind of get it.”

Adora smiled, nodding and laying back down. Several minutes of silence passed before Catra spoke again.

“Do I… do I still look… you know… girly? I kind of don’t… hate that you thought I was one, and stuff.” 

_Is that weird? Did I just make it weird?_

Adora laughed again, tinkling and melodic, and Catra fought back the blossoming fit of anxiety.

“I mean yeah, kinda? Like we're sixteen now but you don't really look like a guy. Although, you definitely look flatter than some of the girls. But you know, yeah... yeah, you sorta do...” Adora smiled up at the top bunk, and her cheeks pinked before she spoke again.

“Yeah, and it kind of sometimes makes more sense to think of you that way, just like, when you’re going through my head and stuff.”

And the silence, again, filled the space in the room. Catra could hear blood rushing through too-sensitive ears. Adora hummed and bit at her nails. The rush grew louder as the sound of the blonde’s voice faded further away. The magicat’s stomach twisted like spiders were crawling through it. The silence was maddening.

“Hey, Adora?”

“Yes, Catra?”

“Do you ever feel like there are spiders in your stomach?”

Adora burst out in another fit of giggles, just barely managing to snort out her response. “Spiders? In your stomach, Catra? No!”

Catra squirmed, and the blonde’s amusement turned to concern, she grabbed the magicat’s arms and leaned forward. “Why, do you? Is something wrong? I’ll go get a medic, just wait right here.”

Before Catra could even get a word in edgewise, Adora was bolting up.

“Adora, wait!” a hand shot out, grabbing the blonde’s own before she could bolt out of arm’s reach. It took a moment to register it was Catra’s.

“It’s just - it’s only whenever I’m around you… and it’s…” Catra started lamely, ears twitching as a blush erupted over the magicat’s cheeks. “It’s nice. So…. can you stay with me?”

The spiders seemed to be marching around in Adora’s stomach now.

“You know, it’s moments like this when it’s easier to imagine you’re a girl,” Adora blurted out.

Catra half-whimpered, flinched and silenced herself, and the blush deepened. The magicat wouldn’t look Adora in the eyes now, and a tiny fist balled up in the sheets.

“And when I do that,” Adora continued as she slides back into the bed, “I think I get the spiders too.” She pulled the magicat close, her arms wrapped securely around her friend’s shoulders, “I’ll stay. Just let me hold you for a bit, okay?”

The magicat nodded, face red as the Fright Zone skies at dawn.

“Is it um… okay if I call you a girl, Catra?” Heat blossomed behind Adora’s cheeks now, and the blonde prepared for a vitriolic rejection.

What she didn’t expect was for Catra to bury _her_ face in her shoulder, nodding softly, nor for the exhilarating twist in her stomach when _she_ did. 

“That’s my… g-girl,” her chest felt as though it would burst as she said it, the spiders in her stomach seemed to be spinning webs en masse. Catra jolted beside her, burying her burning-hot face and body further into Adora’s side, humming softly as she snuggled closer.

Tentatively, haltingly, with painstaking deliberation, Adora wrapped her arms around the girl laying beside her.

**Heh, wonder what the cat’s dreaming about. She’s fuckin’ redfaced over there. I wonder if she’s shagging that other deserter friend, whaddya think boss?**

**I** **_think_ ** **she’s starting to stir, and I** **_think_ ** **you should stop carrying her, mister wandering hands! I’m going to sting her again, and it would be a shame if instead of just picking her up, I had to carry your sorry tail back to camp!**

**Eh, uh, yes ma’a - yes, sir.**

* * *

Adora and Madame Razz sat at the table, and the blonde tentatively sipped at her tea. After every slurp she looked back down at the cup with confusion, splaying her hands out on the table with the palms upturned. On the third sip she caved, sighing exasperatedly.

“This is supposed to bring my memory back! Why can’t I remember?!”

Madame Razz laughed heartily before she replied, “No, silly, it’s just tea! To calm your mind! You have had a difficult journey, one that is just beginning. I wanted to give you something to warm your bones!”

Adora set the mug down, propping her chin on the heel of one of her hands and frowning. “Oh,” she muttered, skimming the index finger of her other hand across the surface of the steaming liquid. The bite of the heat was comfortable as sliding into bed after training, a sensation both familiar and homely. 

Heat had been one of Shadow Weaver’s favorite ways to punish Catra. She would bring water to a near-boil before dropping a ring or other small trinket in it, commanding Catra to fish it out, sometimes even dying the liquid so the poor girl would have to spend time searching for it. She had always, in her own words, disciplined Catra whenever Adora had failed to control her. Often she would beg Adora to keep the magicat on a tighter leash once she had finished punishing her.

Which, naturally, meant anytime Shadow Weaver punished Catra for her shortcomings, Adora would take the time on her own to punish herself for them too, obsessed with paying the price for her lack of perfect control, her own inability to keep others from harm, for getting Catra into such terrible messes. 

And though it had hurt in the past, the burn of too-hot water had faded to pleasant tingles, the kind that felt strangely nostalgic and let her anchor herself when sitting in strange houses in the Whispering Woods. 

“Eh, you know the tea is mostly for drinking, yes?” Madame Razz’s voice cut through the silence, and Adora jerked her hands back into her lap, apologizing and stiffly bowing at the waist.

“I’m no stranger to children who have run from their homes, Adora” the old woman started, and the blonde’s head perked up at the mention of her name. Razz, in a rare bout of complete lucidity, continued. “I have seen that faraway look many times, been in these woods for many children to stumble across. None have been so important as you, save for my Mara.”

“But who you are, the power you held, the same power you will wield again, the power that will always live inside of you… There are those out there, in the most beautiful kingdoms and the darkest pits who will never see beyond it. But Madame Razz sees you now,” the woman smiled kindly. She reached a wrinkled hand out to the blonde, and gently pulled her fingers from the steaming water, wincing slightly. “Truth has been a weapon used against you all your life, and what you seek will leave it turned against you still. All of Etheria needs you, Adora, but what in all this world do you need?"

“I don't need anything,” she breathed, “I’m ready.”

Razz smiled sadly, “We both know that isn't true, dearie.I can return your memories, Adora, but you must promise not to trust the sword, nor the Princesses, nor the Horde. No kingdom and no tool can control you; you must choose what is right for yourself. And remember the power is within you. The sword will never make you She-Ra, you were always her. The world may need you, and people in it may... But you are not beholden to them. Go back for your wi- your friend, do you understand me?”

A very confused Adora just barely hung on to what Razz was saying, mostly nodding and smiling as she braced for the woman to begin restoring her memory, give her back what was stolen from her. Why would she need anything? All her life she had been raised to do one thing - win. There was nothing she needed but the thrill of battle, the guarantee of a swift, precise victory, the promise of a peace and control that would keep anybody from getting hurt. 

Her reverie was broken as a deep maroon stardust filled the space between the witch’s hands, stretching to strings and lines as the old woman began tracing runes within the air. As she began chanting softly under her breath, spools and wires of those same lights threaded around Adora’s body, inching up from her legs and hands. Bolts of dizzying shocks needled at her extremeties, and the blonde stiffed her lips, refusing to whimper at the painful jolt. She clenched her fists and looked about the room as visions, truthful retellings of her nightmares, flooded her eyes.

“This may sting a little, Mara, dearie!” 

* * *

_A sword in the woods, an ancient, dormant power. The pylons of light that had shot across the ground and sky when she plucked it - she had been meant for the Sword of Protection, and meant to be captured by the Bright Moon Insurgents._

_The first time she had uttered that warcry and grown three feet into the air, felt the rush of power, it seemed as though her whole life had been gearing her up for this one moment. The way she had subjugated the Elemental and had been able to protect those children - this power, if she could understand it, would be the key to protecting everybody back home, especially Catra._

_The Myth of She-Ra, the power she had come to wield. The First Ones, their writing, the ways she had always been able to read it. Something about her was strange, and her captors saw it too. Whatever she was, her captors may have even seen something else. Something like an ally, or even a friend._

_And then Thaymour… Thaymour had been a slaughter - a massacre. Bodies of the dead and dying, young and old and everything in between, had congregated in the streets within minutes of the Horde’s assault. Buildings shattered into hundreds of pieces of shrapnel and rubble as the town was brutally shelled by tanks. Blood poured from the ears of children whose eardrums had ruptured, women with compounded fractures dazedly tried to push their bones back in, and the minutemen who had rushed to the defense of their homes…_

_They lay in the streets broken and bloodied. The lucky ones had been perforated by a wall of laser fire, dead before they hit the ground. Those less fortunate had wrestled the soldiers and perhaps even killed a few, before they themselves had been flattened and trampled, bludgeoned and impaled, left to bleed and die. The orchestra of chaos scored their final moments, and with every fiber of her being Adora knew this had to be a mistake. But it wasn’t, and she couldn’t go back. She turned against the Horde, slaughtered squadrons of her former comrades, and…_

_The look on Catra’s face when she changed back. The way one young soldier reached his hand out to her only for it to sink back to the ground one final time. He had died, slashed across the stomach, trailing blood as he had tried to retreat from her. From Adora._

_She couldn’t control this raw power, she killed him. She looked back up to Catra, half hoping she’d hold her and tell her it would be okay, half begging her to run away. The girl’s shape disappeared in smoke as she turned her back, and Adora couldn’t even have a moment of quiet grief before the children, Bow and Glimmer, rushed back and praised her for saving the town, unable to imagine s_ _aving them had cost a little piece of her soul, cost her former comrades so much more._

_The Sea Gate._

_‘Who do you think took the fall for you when you ran away, Adora? Do you even care, running around with your new best friends all the time? Just_ come home _, please.’_

_And again she had betrayed Catra, leaving her and Scorpia in the open seas as she went back to Bright Moon._

And as she sat there, watching her life unfold itself before her, Adora realized how many times she had left Catra behind those last few months. She shut her eyes tighter, but the visions did not abate. Fire sung in her veins as the witch’s magic held her in its thrall, and tears cool as ice dribbled down her cheeks, thrashing her head back and forth to try to hide the sights she couldn’t block away.

_Sometime after Mystacor she had faced a group of soldiers, unaware that Kyle had been sent with them. And although she had tried not to hurt them, she still had no control over her strength. The first time that encounter she had struck, a halfhearted jab at best, the head of the girl she struck had jerked back sickeningly. The base of her skull touched itself to the center of her shoulder blades. When she had toppled back and fallen she had struck forehead first into the dirt. Even simply blocking a strike without offering any give, without leaning any bit into the momentum of a strike, had left soldiers with shattered knuckles, clutching their wrists and crying out in agony._

_Terrified of her own savage might, she attempted flicking her next attacker in the stomach, and he collapsed to the ground with a breathless gasp. The soldier scrabbled backwards, and hid behind his own arms as sputtered, clawing at his helmet until it popped off with a_ hiss _._

_“Shadow Weaver told us you turned,” he grunted, spitting blood and breathing heavy. “Catra said it was a phase and I wanted to believe her. Believe you weren’t beyond saving. But it’s clear now.” He lowered his arms, and angry, defiant eyes met her own._

Kyle.

_“But it’s obvious that you’re beyond helping, Adora. Go ahead and kill me.”_

_Rogelio and Lonnie were at her tail, helmets in their hands, staring at her icily._

_Adora, trapped in the prison of She-Ra, turned and ran._

_For all of her power, she was still nothing but a walking bomb if she could not keep control._

* * *

When Glimmer and Bow, now clad in winter gear as the temperature of the Whispering Woods plummeted to inhospitable cold, had met back up with Swift Wind, they had been elated to find She-Ra’s steed. And re-enamored by the concept of a talking horse. Helpfully enough, once they had concluded fawning over him, their horse friend had promised to lead them to Madame Razz, a witch of the woods who had taken him in and had ties to She-Ra. That was about where the helpful conversation ended and the ‘describing what we are doing’ songs began.

If you asked Glimmer, the mystique of a talking horse had worn off about thirty seconds into his first vocal number. Bow, however, was trying to join in on the alicorn’s verse, tonelessly singing background vocals, finding a way to stay off beat in new and different manners with every verse, to the Princess’s extreme annoyance. She dissolved in a fizzle of glitter, and a loud scream echoed from far away before she returned, grimacing and tenderly rubbing her throat.

“Can we please,” she chattered coughed, and her voice scratched as she continued, smiling, “please stop singing?”

“Uhhhhh…” Bow and Swift Wind exchanged a glance, sly smiles breaking across their faces before the horse spoke again, “it’s really the only thing keeping me sane right so no, sorry. It’s just not in the cards for us tonight.”

**“Magical friends on a magical adventure, Singing a song to commemorate the adventure!”**

“Uuuuuuugh, seriously, Swift Wind! Do you have to just _rhyme_ adventure with adventure?!” 

Bow cleared his throat, holding a finger in the air. “Well, what would you have us rhyme it with, Glimmer?”

“Pff, I dunno,” the Princess crossed her arms and shrugged, “literally anything else?”

“Yeah, like what, Glimmer?” Swift Wind huffed, flipping his hair and whinnying.

“Well. Umm… I guess, I ah…” The princess trailed off lamely, fishing her water canteen from her back and shamefacedly taking a swig.

“Uh-huh, that’s what I thought… Just leave this to a pro, Glim.” Swift Wind spoke, raising his head up in faux-pride.

**“Sorry man I just needed a thirst quencher, sick and tired of controlling this whole magical adventure!”**

“Whoooooooaaaaa, Glimmer with the bars!” Bow squealed, and his voice cracked. The boy jumped, pumping his fist in the air.

“Yeah, yeah, whatever… Are we there yet, Swift Wind?” 

“Seriously, Glimmer, that’s some impressive work.” The horse winked at her before speaking again. “We are, it’s just over the crest of this hill, actually! I’m kind of starting to get nervous. I know that Adora’s in good hands and that Madame Razz will restore her memories and all but -”

“Wait, someone else is going to restore her memories?!” Glimmer huffed, crossing her arms again. “But _I_ wanted to be the one to do that!”

Bow stopped in his tracks, blankly staring at the Princess. “You can do that?”

“Uhhhh, ya! The spirit in the woods taught me!” She flashed him a broad smile.

“And you… just listen to every creepy ghost you find in haunted forests in the middle of the night?” Bow’s eyebrows arched, and he cupped his chin thoughtfully.

“Ya, Glimmer,” Swift Wind broke in, “seems just a little irresponsible!”

She stamped her foot and retorted, “It would be if I listened to all of them! But I don’t! Just the ones who say they can make me more powerful!”

“That’s a real improvement,” Swift Wind drawled. “Now come on, we gotta hurry! Something’s about to happen out here, something big. Everything is off.”

Silence filled the space between them, and the far-off cries of fleeing animals echoed through the forest.

“Hey look! Guys, we’re here!” Bow shouted, pointing at a house on the hill. 

Swift Wind groaned and shook on his legs, and his eyes flashed as he looked back to his companions.

“She’s in trouble. And this forest,” he grunted as hail began pouring from the blackened skies. “We have to get inside quickly.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading! I'm working on another update now and I'm sorry for the delay! I hope everyone has a great rest of the day. Once again, if you're into the idea of a She-Ra writer's discord hmu at Monika#5599 and I'll let you know if/when I get one up and running.


	14. Reunions

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello, all~ Thanks so much for the positive feedback on my last chapter! This is, I think, the final setup before we start tackling the Season One finale, and I'm just so excited to write the Battle, and Catra's reintroduction to TERFWeaver. So, yeah! Here's this chapter, don't be afraid to leave kudos and comments and stuff - it seriously makes my day everytime someone leaves a comment, no matter if it's constructive criticism or asking how my day's going or just screaming about suspense or something! Y'all are the reason why I keep writing, and I really and seriously love every one of you guys!!!

Adora settled back into her current self like sacks of rocks sinking to the bottom of a river. Time slunk across her shoulders like a meandering cat, and the present seemed to stumble drunkenly into the past, swinging back and forth. It was disorienting - about four months worth of missing time crammed into her mind within instants and it felt like her skull would split from the inside out if she moved any bit too quickly.

Razz spoke to her and her unfocused, glazed eyes zeroed in on her lips. The woman may as well have been biting her words out through a gag, or talking to her from underwater, her speech was inarticulate and garbled. Dazed, Adora blinked her eyes over and over, and she belatedly noticed her ears were ringing. And when she opened her mouth to speak she could feel the bones within her skull vibrate, although the sound seemed far off, like a stranger shouting from across a field.

“My head….” She groaned, grasping at her head and folding over herself at the table, hands to her temples and elbows to her knees. She braced herself, barely able to keep from falling ass over elbow to the floor. “Can’t understand you, Razz.” 

The old witch’s eyes went wide, she nodded in understanding. She bolted up, babbling something incomprehensible over her shoulder as she darted into the kitchen.

_Catra._

She had left Catra behind when she offered to return to the Whispering Woods. She had left her to watch as she killed scores of her - once _their_ \- former comrades. She had turned the Horde and turned on Catra without a second thought. And still, she remembered now, the girl had tried to stop Shadow Weaver from erasing her memories, tried to protect her from a dark magician that would have had no qualms with _killing_ her if she had gotten in the way. Adora had betrayed her, left her, forced her to endure whatever sickening punishment Hordak and Shadow Weaver could concoct all by herself, and the girl _still_ not only protected her, but _loved_ her. 

That night in the forest, under the moons and the cover of magic, cradled in each other’s arms. She wondered how Catra could have stood it, touched by the same hands she had watched squeeze the life out of her comrades, kissed by the same lips that had spoken treason. And she had known she would be alone again once Adora had gotten her memories back. Known and accepted and taken what she could get before then. 

Bolts of grief split Adora’s heart as she realized one more time how badly she had fucked Catra over. 

_My, my, it really is a good thing you can’t hurt her anymore,_ it seemed like Shadow Weaver was practically purring inside of her head. And Adora found herself agreeing.

The air turned bitter, and the blonde hacked and coughed at the acrid smell. She shook her head, and noticed halfway after that her headache was gone.

“-rime Root, dearie! Old witch’s trick to alleviate migraines! How do you feel now?” Madame Razz beamed.

“Woah,” Adora stood on shaky legs, steadying herself against the table. “Better… Or less worse, I guess.” She offered a weak smile to the seer.

The door clanked and banged, and Adora quashed the thrill of fear that ran down her stomach, clenching her hands. 

“Dith thomboby thae,” a muffled voice filtered through the wood before the door burst open.

“Did somebody say **Swift Wind**?” An alicorn burst through the door, neighing triumphantly as he cantered into the hovel, which seemed to grow vertically to accommodate his imposing height. Bow and Glimmer followed shortly behind him, shouting Adora’s name.

“Swift Wind! Bow! Glimmer!” Adora cried out, diving toward her friends with tears in her eyes. 

“Adora!” They cried out in unison.

Bow and Glimmer sank to their knees, wrapping the blonde in a bone crushing hug. Swift Wind wrapped his wings around the trio protectively, and Glimmer sobbed in the blonde’s arms.

“I was so, so worried about you!” She sniffled, squeezing her a little tighter.

“This is all my fault!” Bow half sobbed, “if I had kept a closer eye on Scorpia we-”

“Enough,” Adora’s tight voice cut him off. “It’s my fault, they came for She-Ra’s sword. They came for me, you guys just got caught in the crossfire.”

“I shouldn’t have insisted we went to Princess Prom with a war on!” Glimmer cried, “we should have known the Horde wouldn’t stay neutral. This is my fault - it was naive and immature and -”

“And everything a child ought to be,” Razz tutted at the Princess, affectionately ruffling her hair. “You are a _child_. Your trust and hope are things to never be ashamed of, even if they are misplaced at times.”

“Yeah, silly. Where would I be without my childlike sense of wonder and optimism?” Swift Wind harrumphed.

“Oh, gee, I don’t know,” Glimmer sniffled and laughed. “Maybe in a position where you weren’t constantly annoying me?”

“Glimmer!” Bow’s voice cracked, “you _joined_ the rap battle, remember?”

Glimmer groaned, burying her head further into Adora’s shoulder. “Uuuuuugh! Don’t remind me!”

Adora cackled, “There was a rap battle? And I didn’t see it?”

“We’ll be sure to have a part two.” Bow smiled, “but for now something’s wrong in the woods. And it’s up to the Best Friend Squad to fix it!”

“All right,” Adora rose to her feet, pulling the others with her. “We’ll sort this out. But after this I have… there’s someone…” _Catra._ She cleared her throat, “There’s something I have to do.”

Glimmer nodded. “We trust you. Let’s go.”

* * *

Stiff winds raked through Scorpia’s stormy grey hair as she and her squadmates sped across the wastelands bordering the Fright Zone. The first of the moons peeked through the horizon at the far right edge of the world as the sun dipped low to her back. The last rays of heat left a pleasant warmth on her back, and she could feel the beginnings of a sunburn playing at the edges of her shoulders. She pivoted at her hips, inspecting the limp and prostrate form of her latest catch - Catra.

It was a shame, really. They had gotten along so well when they had partnered up for the Princess Prom. Originally Scorpia had been planning on taking the mission alone, confident in her capability to take the Sword and lure She-Ra back to the Horde, but Catra’s needling insistence had worn her down, and she had found herself rather taken by the magicat. Saying no was always hard, especially to someone who was as intent on accomplishing her mission as she herself was. Catra had _wanted_ Adora back in the Horde, or so she had thought. 

Had it all just been some kind of con so she could get Adora to take her with her? Why had they been separated? Why on Etheria would they even think they _could_ leave the Horde?

No, nobody left the Horde. And Hordak had seen to it. He had all the power, even back then. The superior technology, the greater resource pool - and after receiving the Black Garnet - he had a power source fuelling supercharged machines, and weapons of mass destruction. The warlord’s twisted sense of humor and justice had meant Scorpia’s grandparents and those who followed them were conscripted in the Horde Justice Division, and sent to quell whatever uprising was left in the wake of their choice to ally themselves with him.

She had heard the stories about the other half of her family - the granduncles and grandaunts sent to labor camps, to farms, to executions. She'd heard it in the hushed tones of her mothers past her bedtimes, in the half-insane ramblings of her senile grandparents, she'd heard it when she had eavesdropped on conversations between Generals and Force Captains, and when she had left the spire she'd been raised in, she'd heard the whispers about it from cadets. About the family so devoted to Hordak it would kill its own for not joining - a family so devoted to a peaceful and orderly Etheria that it did what no royalty before or since had done; a family that sacrificed its connection to their Runestone for a place within the Horde.

Her family had never gotten to defect from the Horde, not once her grandparents had sold them out and traded away the Black Garnet in exchange for a place at Hordak’s table. She didn’t get to leave - she didn’t have the choice, she never did. She was born a soldier, just as her mothers had been, just as her grandparents had forced them to be. And if she couldn’t leave, if she had been raised all her life to keep others from doing the same… Well, it was both an act of duty and revenge to bring defectors back for reconditioning. A responsibility to the Horde, a burden she had been forced since birth to accept, an act of heinous retribution. Because if she couldn’t leave, then she would be damned to an eternity of whatever torture the despot Hordak could concoct before she would allow another soul to do the same.

So she did as she had always done, going through her job with the sort of unhinged glee that had made her famous throughout the Horde. Punishing the defectors because she knew she didn’t have the courage to be one of them, didn’t have the heart to ignore the duty that had been thrust on her, didn’t have the heart to be anything other than what she was. And for all that it had twisted and wounded like a knife when she had seen Catra on the security footage, stealing a skiff and making off with the once-a-traitor-always-a-traitor Adora. How many soldiers had she killed as She-Ra? Only for Catra to make off with her at the first chance she had gotten. 

A scowl spread over Scorpia’s face as she stared into the thickening, howling, gnawing darkness blanketing over Etheria. Where the moons had once been peeking over the sky only thick carpets of smoky clouds hung. The storm she had thought she had left behind in the thick of the forest was biting at her heels again, like a hungry dog. She barked orders to her crewmates to speed the skiff up. 

Hordak had been planning something, she had known that. But she hadn’t thought the breadth of his scheme would cover hundreds of miles of the Etherian surface, spreading from one end of the horizon to the other. Was this how he accomplished his goal to kill the Whispering Woods? By covering the planet in darkness?

Shivering at the ferocious bites of the wind and the needling stabs of the cold, Scorpia’s eyes came to rest again on the sleeping form of her prisoner, and unabashed loathing twisted in her stomach. Catra was everything she wished she could have been. Catra had been a child - she had done the same P.T. as all the other cadets, taken the same classes, endured the same punishments, more or less. She had even had something Scorpia had never known… friends.

All Scorpia had to talk to was a stuffed scorpio. She had spent her whole childhood holed away in the top floors of the highest spire in all the Fright Zone, educated and trained all on her lonesome to become the leader of the most feared Division of Horde Spec Ops. Her whole life had been spent void of the presence of anybody her age, of any spare moment to be anything other than the future eforce of Hordak’s will. But Catra… Catra had something she would have never gotten - normalcy - and she had thrown it all away. 

Those few days together, travelling to and from Princess Prom, Scorpia had realised Catra was everything she wished she could be, and more. She had been what the not-Princess wished she could have become. She could have possibly even been a… friend. Her first one, at that. But she had ruined everything by running away. 

The magicat stirred and groaned, kicking her legs as her head rolled from side to side against the beam she was propped upon and tied to. At least she would have had a killer headache when she woke up.

“I don’t know what you were thinking, running away like that.” Scorpia’s voice was melancholy, and she found herself tutting at the unconscious girl, “but nobody escapes from the Horde, Catra. You saw that yourself.”

Her heart pounded in her chest and the warm rush of rage blossomed inside her ribcage. “Why would you do something so stupid, Catra? You had it all! You had a childhood, you had a life, you had… friends. And you just threw them away to help a murderer, a traitor.

The magicat’s tongue lolled out of her mouth and her lips twitched in a yawn. Her fingers and toes flexed and her eyes blinked open blearily.

“Adora?”

Scorpia felt her lips pull back in a cheshire, saturnine grin as she squat low to the ground, looming over the girl’s frame. She chuckled as the magicat drew backwards, and snapped her claws at the side of the girl’s hair, snipping off tufts of her mane all too easily.

“No, not quite! It’s me… You remember me from Princess Prom, don’t you?” 

Catra blanched. “Oh fuck… Scorpia… H-heyy, I know you found me out in the woods but this really isn’t how it-”

“Oh, let me guess,” the not-Princess hummed. “You’re certainly not defecting with a known traitor, me running to you in the woods was purely coincidental, and there’s no need for me to send you to be processed and reconditioned, right?”

Catra gulped and nodded, clearly terrified. Tiny beads of sweat ran down her temples, and her cheeks flushed as she stared up at the girl, wide eyed. Scorpia’s stomach flipped with some unnameable feeling, and she retracted from the girl’s space, uncharacteristically nervous. 

She lumbered to the guard railings along the side of the skiff, looking out to the orange-darkness of the looming Fright Zone. Bolts of red lightning raced between the thick billows of clouds and shot to the ground in terrifying explosions. Ice was falling from the sky now, and a thin canopy arced over the skiff, protecting the heads of its passengers. Stinging bolts of rain slashed sideways through the stiff winds, spattering the muscled enforcer and freezing over patches of her exoskeleton and skin alike, and a dark swarm of specks - the bot army that would be the first wave to invade Bright Moon - grew larger against the horizon.

“Well, I’m afraid that I don’t buy it, and neither does Hordak. There’s a cell waiting for you in the Fright Zone, and maybe if you ask real nice I’ll make sure you bunk with Shadow Weaver.”

Catra stiffened.

_So she had hit a nerve._

“Soon the Horde’s numbers will darken the grounds of Bright Moon, topple the oppression of the Princesses, and bring peace and order to Etheria, and eliminate She-Ra while you and your precious mentor rot in Beast Island.”

“I want _nothing_ to do with that old witch, Scorpia, get that through your big bug brain!” Catra hissed and spat, both her mane and her tail had puffed out threateningly, and her eyes promised violence.

Scorpia laughed again, “Oh, wildcat… You’re too easy!” She plodded back toward the tied up girl, and her footsteps shook the deck of the skiff as she drew closer. “With any luck that means you both will tear each other apart before I have to worry about what to do with either one of you!” She guffawed.

“Congrats, you big doofus! You just helped me decide who your new cellma-”

“But I-”

Meaty claws lashed against the magicat’s cheek hard enough to bruise. Catra clamped her teeth together, pulling her tongue back in her jaw the way she’d learned from all the years Shadow Weaver struck her, and from all the self defense classes the Horde taught. Again, Scorpia’s pincers came down and struck at her, and again. With stars in her vision, Catra’s head tilted to the side as she spat blood and stared off into the middle distance.

“You know, it’s really rude to cut somebody off like that Catra! As I was saying before you so rudely interrupted me,” Scorpia giggled and stuck out her tongue. “You’re going to be jailed with Shadow Weaver, I know you two don’t have much love for one another, but think of it as a temporary solution. She’s going to be going to Beast Island, and you…” She cupped the magicat’s cheeks with her pincers, and Catra resisted the urge to spit blood all over the brute’s face. “If you’re worth a damn, which I _will_ be deciding on Hordak’s behalf… you’ll be sent for reconditioning. And if not,” she grinned, roughly trailing her claws along Catra’s cheeks hard enough to break the skin. The magicat squirmed, but did not cry out. “Then the camps in the Northern Reach could always use some more fresh meat.”

She turned her back on the magicat, who coughed and spat quietly, and slunk back to the helm of the skiff. The Fright Zone’s buildings had grown from finger sized protrusions to looming, people sized towers. They were close now. Bots whizzed past either side of the skiff as tanks and skiffs loomed on the near horizon. The invading force was nearly ready.

“Scorpia,” Catra coughed, “wait.”

The scorpion looked over her shoulder, lips pursed. “I’m listening,” she said tersely.

“W-weren’t we… y’know, friends,” the girl shivered and coughed.

Scorpia’s heart twisted in her chest as the weight of the word settled over her, dark and ugly as the still-brewing storm that blanketed the Etherian skies. She walked to the starboard side of the skiff, fishing an emergency blanket out of the survival compartment located on the side. Lumbering back over to the magicat and unfolding the blanket in slow, measured motions, she bent low. Catra flinched at first, and Scorpia hushed her gingerly, tucking the corners of the blanket into the borders of the rope around the girl’s shoulders and draping the rest over the shivering girl’s frame. 

Ice crystals glittered in Catra’s hair and rain spattered against the thick blanket in tiny splotches and gobs as the scorpion leaned closer. Catra whimpered and shrunk away, breaths coming in quick and shallow. The magicat hissed, gasped quietly and silenced herself, and braced for a blow that never came.

“In another life, wildcat.” Scorpia’s answer was quiet, reflective and melancholy.

The not-Princess stood to her full height and shot an embarrassed smile down to the magicat, who regarded her with confusion.

“That’s my secret,” she sighed. “I really wish we could have been friends. But I have a duty, a responsibility. One I can’t just run from like you, or destroy like Adora.”

Scorpia’s heart twisted painfully in her chest, and Catra sniffled and bowed her head. Her breath hitched in her throat, and Scorpia found herself wondering if the magicat was crying before she spat thick, dark blood. 

“I know,” her voice was thick in her throat. “Thanks for the blanket.”

“Don’t mention it, wildcat.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you all so much for reading, leaving kudos, commenting, and bookmarking! Please feel free to keep showing me tha love, it makes this so much more rewarding than writing into a vacuum! I'm hoping to have the next update out sometime between Sunday and Tuesday, although it's possible I'll hit a burst of inspiration and do it sooner too haaha!


	15. The Storm

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hey guys! kind of a shorter update, mostly just trying to get stuff set up - i think before i do the battle of brightmoon i actually have an AU version of the promise coming up, as well as catra meeting back up with SW during the storm! so, in the meantime here's about 2.5K words of me setting characters up for that hahaha!! thank you to everyone reading/commenting/leaving kudos! i'm working about 50 hours this week at my regular job, but i'm hoping to get the next update out sometime next week, although maybe something will happen and i'll be able to finish it much sooner than that!! but, i hope you enjoy this humble offering!

The reformed Best Friend Squad broke the roiling dark blanket of the storm, carried on Swift Wind’s back. Arcs of crimson flashed through the dingy clouds, casting the emptiness of the sky in neon maroons and purples. The moons hung low and full in the sky, and those that were still rising in the night sky appeared to be breaching from the great depths of the abyssal cloudline. The four of them looked on in cowed horror, jaws agape as the breadth of the storm’s reach dawned upon them.

“What have they done?” Adora’s eyes narrowed to slits and her mouth drew itself in a thin line.

“This isn’t just the Whispering Woods,” Bow whispered in awe. It had been too dark on the ground, had been pitch as an oily night. He couldn’t have known it was this bad, none of them could have.

“It’s all of Etheria.” Glimmer finished, a tear rolling halfway down her cheek before it began to flash freeze on her skin. Her breath hitched in her throat at the unexpected, stinging sensation as she wiped it away. “We can’t stay up here much longer; it’s getting colder!”

Swift Wind grumbled in agreement, and set himself on a course back under the cloudline, humming in concentration as his horn began to glow. He cleared his throat, looking pointedly up at Adora.

“A little help?” He asked, harrumphing.

“Oh,” she smiled sheepishly. “Sorry… Glimmer, can I have my sword back?”

The Princess’s eyes lit in enthusiasm, and she wrapped her fingers around the pommel and drew it, holding the sword out and to her side, offering it back to its rightful wielder. 

Adora reached a hand out and stopped, hovering hesitantly over the sword. The way Catra had looked at her that first battle in Thaymour… All the people she’d killed, how easily any of them could have been her old squadmates... Taking the sword again felt like saying the horrible things she had done didn’t matter, like so long as she had some kind of moral high ground it didn’t matter if she stood on the bodies of the dead, like saying everyone was right to fear her and run from her. But if she didn’t take it, if she didn’t use the power she was born to wield… How many would kill and die in her stead? 

No, she was beyond saving. But everyone else out there wasn’t.

Adora took the sword, and the familiar, horrible cry burbled in her throat.

_ “For the honor of Grayskull!” _

Power rushed through her, searing and intoxicating; the devil she had come to know those few months living as a rebel. She quashed the self disgust welling up in her stomach, the kind suspiciously akin to nausea, and pumped her fist in the air, sword held high overhead. As her brows twitched in concentration, clouds parted around the foursome, and the biting cold abated. 

“There’s your - ah - light, Swifty,” she panted. “But let’s... get down quick… I-I don’t - hoo! - know how long I can... hold the….. shield for.”

“Uh, yeah, I’m on it. You guys aren’t exactly light cargo,” he huffed. A tired Swift Wind was invariably a grumpy one.

The countless trees of the forest whipped violently; limbs sheared off them and wicked high into the air, raked up by the ferocious winds. Despite the freezing rain and hailstorms, the drier areas of the forest and the grassy fields dotting the landscape had burst aflame, no doubt the work of the whip-fast bolts of lightning that continued to rain down across the landscape. The world faded in and out of darkness as the storm beat against the shield She-Ra had put in place. 

“The Woods will die if this goes on for long!” Bow shouted above the howl of the wind, horrorstruck.

“Ah! Yeah, and so will we if we don’t get inside soon!” Glimmer yelled.

“There!” Adora pointed to the high, crystalline peak of the Beacon, “we can stay in there and wait for it to blow over, or at least tone down!”

“Are we sure we want to go someplace we know is unstable? I mean, last time it nearly killed us! You remember, don’t you, guys?” Glimmer shouted, shrugging her shoulders.

Adora sighed.  _ Did she really have to be like this right now? _ _   
  
_

“There’s not much of a better option, Glimmer!” Bow hollered. Swift Wind nodded in agreement.

“Urghhh, we are  _ so  _ going to die in there!” Glimmer harrumphed, crossing her arms again.

The alicorn began his descent, headed toward the Beacon, as Adora struggled to maintain the barrier between them and the storm, straining loudly. Wind broke through in icy gusts and small pebbles of hail beaned the quartet, greeted with choruses of ‘ow’ and ‘oof’ as the group lamented the forthcoming bruises. Slashing, sidelong impacts with the ice drew blood from all except She-Ra, who squirmed uncomfortably, needled by her own guilt over her relative invulnerability. 

“Can’t you go down any faster?” Glimmer whined.

Swift Wind threw an unimpressed look over his shoulder at the hotheaded Princess. “Uh, yeah, if you’re not attached to me or any of you having working legs or other body parts, I could just have us free fall? Or you could teleport off me and I could set everyone else down, your majesty.”

Glimmer raised her hands in surrender, “Sheesh, sheesh, okay! I was just asking!”   
  


“Uh guys,” Bow interrupted, “ can we do this when the apocalypse is over?”

“Do nothing! I’m not doing anything!” The Princess shouted defensively, and Adora found herself rolling her eyes. In all her months here after leaving the Horde, had she really not noticed how immature Glimmer was?

The blonde was shaken out of her reverie as the storm stilled and the now-visible blades of grass seemed to stand straighter. There was no wind, no sound, the entire forest had grown far too still, and the black sky took on the hue of an old bruise, yellows, purples, and greens forcing their way through the cracks of the clouds.

“We need to get underground,” she gritted out, “now!”

As the clouds exploded, and the air blew into the screeching howl of a tornado, Swift Wind beat his wings with fervor, straining with all his might to avoid being sucked into the raging cyclone. But it wasn’t enough - the gale force winds were sucking him up and backward, to the twisting storm at their backs. Bow screamed helplessly.

Adora turned her sword to a grappling hook, throwing it down to hook on the branches of one of the trees hundreds of feet below, only for the wood to shatter and give way under the immense strain. Glimmer spread her arms around everyone and braced; she’d never teleported four people before, but she’d be damned if she would let them die like this today.

* * *

Bolts of lightning twisted through the air and black clouds, thicker than smoke, blanketed the totality of the horizon. Etheria itself had been plunged into glacial darkness as hail and lightning strikes lashed at the ground below. Dried vegetation was immolated in the craggy grasslands along the far outskirts of the Crimson Wastes, which had itself actually frozen over. The Whispering Woods, pounded by freezing rains, had begun to glaze over in thin, crystalline sheets of ice. Hours ago when the storm had begun, the sun had been blotted out of sight. And now, as nightfall approached, the moons themselves remained hidden. Time itself seemed to halt as the planetwide storm 

Entrapta’s laughter, a sound Hordak had listened to for the last several hours, had come to reach a maniacal pitch, feverish and rabid as she took in the video feeds of the absolute destruction her experiment had wrought on the Etherian surface. The girl, seated across the wall of monitors, kicking her legs as she watched the havok, was positively giddy as she took in the culmination of all of her labor.

“Journal entry two-hundred thirty-eight dash bee! Experiment is a resounding  _ success _ ! Use of the Black Garnet as a catalyst for increased hypothermic electrical activity has resulted in planetary control of weather conditions, including cataclysmic disaster and,” she paused, taking in a breath, “ _ woooooow~  _ and the  _ complete annihilation  _ of natural fauna such as the Whispering Woods in a projected seventy-two hours.”

_ Three days _ . Hordak found himself smiling.

A strange thing, that. Smiles seemed much the same to him as a grimace, although Entrapta had corrected his initial assessment. It wasn’t just a grimace, it was a  _ happy  _ grimace. Three days until the complete Horde victory, the culmination of all his work since he had been broken away from the Hive Mind. What would Prime think if he were here? Would he be proud of him? Feel like he was worthy?

No.

The answer came too easily to him, just as it always had before. Knowledge that Horde Prime would condemn him for giving himself a name, building himself an empire, making himself a  _ friend _ . No, Prime would burn it all, every bit of the planet, if he ever built the portal and made it back to him. 

But if he let the Black Garnet do its work... He could deny Prime that satisfaction. Horde Prime was inevitable, inexorable. He had found every pathway to every world, learned to manipulate every portal to every dimension to spread his infinite power. He was unending, and as such it was inevitable that he would someday discover Etheria. Hordak would be destroyed for what he had done here, and so would there rest of the planet. It was better, he decided, for him to burn it on his own terms rather than let Horde Prime do it.

“Well done,” he started, lips twisting in a terrible, cruel smile, “Entrapta.”

He rested a hand on the laughing girl’s shoulders and called the twist in his stomach the anticipation of victory.

“It’s all because of your help. Thank you, Hordak. For showing me how to make the impossible a reality.” The girl quieted, breathing out a quiet sigh as she wiped tears from her eyes, putting her hand over his. She looked over at him, twisting the chair so her body faced his. The wall of monitors surrounding them cast her in a crimson light, and her eyes glittered like jewels. Like  _ stars. _

“So this is what they’ve always looked like…” Hordak murmured in realization.

The girl tilted her head confused. She was smiling softly, and their hands remained clasped.

Was it wrong to feel this way? Yes, a cardinal sin. But he would make sure this world entombed him and every deplorable act he could ever commit. So Hordak sighed, his hand clasped in hers, and smiled at the girl looking up at him. 

She was absolutely beautiful.

“And thank you… for showing me a life where emotion is not sin.” He was shocked to find himself feeling sincerely, feeling pained that this life would end someday, feeling…  _ remorse  _ that he did not know how to stop Prime, or even how to stop himself. There was blood on his hands, and no way to wash it.

_ But… there was… Krtyis. _

“Entrapta…” He was already a traitor. He just may as well have begun accepting it at this point, started playing the part, he realized. “Do you know what the stars are?”

The girl’s eyes, glittering as they did, brimmed with curiosity and wonder. Hordak’s knees shook as he marvelled at the weight of his own depravity. He was going to sell out his maker, take up arms against him. If he won, he would have this world, and if he lost… Well, he would be sure to destroy his home before Prime ever had the chance to. 

“Tell me,” she smiled breathlessly, standing up and kicking the rolling chair back, clasping his other hand in hers and pressing herself closer. The thrill of rebellion, of betrayal, shot through him. His heart pounded, and he realized he was going against everything he had ever known. 

“There are none here, not in this place. Where I am from we call  _ here  _ Despondos, the empty dimension...”

* * *

Despite the crushing darkness blanketing Etheria, the Fright Zone remained bright thanks to the incredible number of buildings and lights that blanketed it so completely. It was a blessing, if you asked Scorpia and her crew, who had spent the last many hours navigating through the oppressive pitch black of the wilds between Bright Moon and home. Although she had only taken back one of them, between the storm and the defector’s isolation, she was positive the elements would do most of her work for her in dispatching of Adora. Failing that, she supposed, when the Horde steamrolled through the wreckage of the woods there would be no place left for her to hide. The not-Princess looked down at Catra, unconscious and tucked tucked into the blanket she had been offered. She smiled. Another job finished was always cause for celebration, especially going after as high risk of targets as both Catra and Adora. 

_ Had Catra always slept this much? _

The officer wrinkled her nose - even after her toxin had worn off, Catra had spent most of the journey back sleeping, even when they had passed through the outskirts of Thaymour. Even when they had made it past the Plumerian outskirts and the venom in the magicat’s system had worn off, the girl had remained asleep as they passed the shambles of another outpost She-Ra had destroyed. She couldn’t imagine how the girl was able to sleep with the acrid smell of putrefied death hanging so overpoweringly in the air. 

The skiff made port and her crewmates prepared for disembarking. Scorpia leaned down, neatly snipping away the ropes that bound Catra to the mast of the skiff with her claws before she checked to make sure her hands and feet were still securely restrained. Satisfied with the knotwork, she hoisted the girl up in the air and over her shoulder in a fireman’s carry, waking the magicat abruptly.

Catra yelped, wriggling in the stronger woman’s arms, protesting her gruff treatment.

“Ow, jeez, I - sheesh!” She kicked her legs uselessly, “Could you at  _ least  _ give me the dignity of walking to my cell, Scorpia?”

“Oh! Shoot, um… I’m sorry, I didn’t know you were awake.” Came the flustered reply.

Catra hissed, “I  _ wasn’t _ until you moved me around like that!”

Scorpia laughed, shrugging and apologizing sheepishly. She unclipped the bindings on her prisoner’s legs and set her down, flagging down some of her companions.

“Hey guys, come with me, the prisoner wants to walk to her cell. I’d like an additional escort!” 


	16. The Promise Pt. 1

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hello, I'm back after 12 straight days of work! I'm still alive, and my next update is officially under way! I was between posting this whole arc as one gargantuan 8K update or doing it in parts, and since I've been gone so long I've opted for parts, so here we go!!!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Catra is incarcerated, and Adora finds the Trauma Generator Room with Glimmer.

The Best Friend Squad and Swift Wind stood within the ruin of the First One’s Beacon, having just entered to seek refuge from the ongoing storm. The once deafening howl of the biting winds was now quieted to a malcontented rumbling, and the crystalline lights within the ruined facility shuddered and hummed to life in a dazzling kaleidoscope of purples, blues, and pinks. Flickering lights droned and buzzed, illuminating a branching set of intricate corridors and hallways, each with sets of sigils printed over the angular ‘doorways’ that fed into them. The walls brightened and the floors shook as the entire superstructure reawoke.

**“Administrator detected.”** A smooth, female voice boomed in an omnidirectional and clipped monotone. The quartet looked at one another, and then to Adora.

“She’s talking about you!” Bow smiled, nodding at Adora.

“M-me? I’m not an admi-” Adora’s eyes widened in understanding as she looked at the sword in her hands, “She-Ra.”

“This place is all First One’s tech! Of course She-Ra is the key to it,” Glimmer beamed, laughing.

“Well, I think I’m gonna stay here since -uh- horses don’t fit through all those areas and all,” Swift Wind pouted and coughed, “but I think you guys should explore.” 

“Oh - my -  _ gosh _ ! I would love to!” Glimmer shouted, pumping a fist in the air. Swift Wind sighed, and Bow looked over at him.

“Aww, it’s okay buddy.” Bow started, raising his hands placatingly. “I can stay with you, if you want.”

Swift Wind’s head perked up, and he eagerly smiled and nodded. “I mean, um, if you want to.” He scoffed, trying to play it cool.

“Of course, pal! Bring us something cool, would you guys?”

“Definitely.” Adora smiled, looking over her shoulder and down the hallway. Glimmer had already started off. “I better get going,” she sighed, jerking her thumb over at the retreating form of the Princess.

“We’ll be here,” Bow nodded. “Be safe in there!”

Adora started down the hallway, barking a ‘will do’ over her shoulder as she jogged to catch up with her companion’s waning shape.

“Glimmer, wait up!” Her voice echoed down the hallway as she shouted, and Bow chuckled at their antics before turning back to his equine friend.

“So, what was life like before you could speak? I mean, like, did you still think the same way you do now, or did that change or something?”

* * *

  
  


The guards hurled Catra sidelong through the air and into the unwelcome dark of the dingy cell. Smashing against the back wall with a  _ thud _ , the magicat groaned lowly, curled in a ball with her arms wrapped around her ribs.

“I bet the old broad’s gonna kill the runt….” If she had been listening any closer, she’d have heard the sound of muffled laughter within her new quarters, rather than just the raucous laughter from the outside.

“Ahh forget ‘bout the inmates, man - didnja hear? Extra rations for us for a week, Scorpia’s orders! We’re gonna live like kings!”

“F-fuck you guys,” she whisper-rasped at the rising glow of the energy gate, staring death at the two soldiers just beyond it.

The laughter within the cell grew louder, venomous and oily and so  _ familiar.  _ The icy thrill of fear rushed down her back, and suddenly her fur was all bristles and her tail was puffing up. Adrenaline dried her mouth, quickened her breath, sent her inching her back to the wall as she listened, terrified.

They said she was in with Shadow Weaver, didn’t they?

Oh no.

The guards must have been right. Sinister laughter boomed, reverberating off the metal walls and crescendoing in a terrible echo. Catra felt herself yelp and flinch before she noticed she was shielding her head between her arms and legs in blind terror as her heart thudded in her ears and pounded in her throat.

_ Weak, _ she thought to herself bitterly. She closed her eyes as frantic tears fell from them. Some prideful part of her huffed at the thought of dying in a dark hole, cowering. She stiffened against the cold metal, growling and wiping the tears from her eyes as she stared into the dark.

“I’m not afraid, you old bitch!” The whisper was deathly silent, so quiet in contrast to the sorceress’s grating cackle she wouldn’t have known she said were she not to feel her own lips move, feel the rush of bravery warm her boness from the inside as it tumbled out. She took a step forward. The room quieted. Echoes reverberated in the hollow silence before clearing out, and Catra found herself thickly swallowing the bitter lump in her throat, the one that had always stayed her tongue in the past. She laughed, high on her own adrenaline.

“What  _ are  _ you doing here?” Her voice seemed to boom in her own ears, and the mixture of contempt and disdain she heard in herself reminded her too much of her new cellmate, her adoptive mother.

“I know why I’m here, I’m a pathetic failure who couldn’t handle the responsibilities of being a Force Captain, blah blah blah!” She rolled her hand in the air flippantly, tapping her foot and laughing again. Her heart pounded in her chest and she half thought it would leap out her throat as she took another breath, forcing her chest to rise smoothly. Her tail frizzed and the gratefully thanked the dark for shielding her.

“But  _ you _ ? Shadow Weaver? Hordak’s bitch? When would you  _ ever _ do something to fall from his graces? I wouldn’t have known you could! Maybe I’m a pathetic failure, but you’re the cocksucking sycophant who couldn’t even keep that act up!” She laughed again, and she couldn’t stop herself. Searing bright dots spun in her eyes, and she thought her head would float off her body. She laughed until she could hardly stand straight and the voice in her ears was near identical to the wretch she stood across from. She couldn’t even tell who she spoke to when she opened her mouth again.

“When did you get so weak?” She guffawed, and hysterical tears pricked at the corners of her eyes.

“If you’re going to gloat, at least tell me you have a plan to get us out of here, too.” Shadow Weaver was uncharacteristically sullen, and Catra found herself recoiling in surprise. All her bravado tumbled out of her. She pressed her back to the wall, slowly sliding to the floor. 

_ Us. _

“Because if not, you’re welcome to help me brainstorm.”

_ Us. _

The word struck Catra like a hammer beats against a nail. They were in this together now, weren’t they? She crawled closer to the sorcerer’s side, close enough that in the dark she could see her. She was chained to the wall by her wrists, arms splayed wide on either side of her. Catra just barely avoided gasping at the sight, ghosting her fingers against the tips of Shadow Weaver’s. The sorceress’s fingers twitched, and the magicat gasped and recoiled. 

She coughed. “I’ve been thinking, and we may have a shot at an escape, if we can get my old Sorcerer’s Guild badge.”

“And do you suggest we just walk on over to it? We’re kinda restrained at the moment,” Catra gestured to the door

“No,” she shook her head, and her hair fell untucked from behind her ears in the pitch dark. Catra raised a hand, fingers outstretched, then froze and pulled back. “We need to get somebody to bring it to us.”

“Who?” Catra wrinkled her nose in confusion. “Kyle, maybe?”

“Perhaps,” she nodded. “I do still have a few favors to call in around here… Do as I say for once in your life, Catra… And perhaps things will work out favorably.”

Catra sighed shakily. She was out of options, out of places to run to, like every other time she’d tried to run, she’d come back to a cage; only now, Shadow Weaver was in here with her. “Yes, Shadow Weaver… I will listen.

Shadow Weaver nodded in the black, twitching two beckoning fingers on the hand nearest to Catra. “Here, child.”

The magicat’s muscles stiffened, her hairs stood on end. Trepidation wracked through her, and her heart soared through her throat, hummed in her ears. How many times had someone, usually  _ her _ , offered some kind of affection and lied? She could still remember the first time, as a child. She and Adora had snuck into the Nutrient Processing Facilities, seen the raw product that was transformed to Horde rations, and come face-to-face with actual contraband foodstuffs. Catra, of course, had insisted she try it while Adora tried to deter her. When Shadow Weaver had found them, Adora had rushed to her side, begging and pleading for forgiveness and mercy. Not for herself, but for Catra. And the old witch had spoken, all narrow eyes and honey-dripping words. 

She had held a hand out to Catra with what had seemed like affection as she said, “Come now, child! You should know better than to consume contraband. Let us go.” And Catra had reached up, stretching her hand out to take that of her benefactress, only to find her arm twisted in the vice like grip. Gnarled claws sunk into the delicate skin along her ears, and Adora had cried out as Shadow Weaver lifted the magicat in the air by her arm and ear, hoarsely rebuking the two of them.

Affection had always been a weapon. Always.

But… maybe it could be different now. They were in this together, weren’t they?

Catra tensely slid across the floor, bringing the edge of one of her wild grey tufts of hair to brush Shadow Weaver’s fingers, expecting the vibrant shock of pain the moment the old witch’s fingers rustled.

The sorceress ran her fingers through the tuft softly, scratching at Catra’s scalp with what could have been affection. The magicat held back a flinch, bit down a sob, closed her eyes and leaned closer into the hand.

  
Maybe the risk could be worth it sometimes, after all. Trust could be worth it.

* * *

The labyrinthine crystal hallways would have been unnavigable if it weren’t for Adora’s ability to read the sigils interspersed along their pathway, and Glimmer found herself grateful that the blonde had caught up to her before she’d rushed too far ahead. The latticework of passageways twisted in sharp angles and turns, spilled into larger walkways and twisting mazes of neon shocks of color as the two strode through the complex. 

“Thanks for waiting on me.” Adora smiled wryly as they turned a corner and stepped into another, larger crystal hall. Glimmer blushed and looked away.

“Yeah… Well, thanks for catching up to me…” She awkwardly rubbed the back of her neck, laughing and diverting her gaze to anyplace save for Adora’s eyes. “So, you mentioned you were having some weird feelings about something?”

Adora frowned and her eyes glazed over. She squared her jaw and shoulders, determined to give nothing away in her quietude. “Yeah. Someone.” She said, pensively.

“I know you had…  _ friends  _ back in the Horde, or something, Adora,” Glimmer’s derision was apparent, contempt positively dripping from her lips as she spat the word ‘friend’ from her mouth. “But anyone worth a damn would have known the Horde was evil and left with you. It’s better that you leave them behind, really.”

That was too easy to believe when she thought like a rebel, thought like some naive Princess, thought like there was really such a thing as good or evil in a war like this. Obviously The Rebellion were the good guys, and anyone who wouldn’t join them if given half a chance was wrong. That’s what she had told herself when she looked at the destruction the Horde had wrought on Thaymour. But when the drilling instructors buried their cadets back home, and when her comrades had seen her nearly kill Kyle, how evil must she have seemed to them? 

It wasn’t better to leave them behind. Not anymore. But she had chosen her side, made her bed once already, and she had gone through the motions of a second bout of treason again. And, more importantly, she had left Catra twice now. Memories, barbed by guilt and shame, filled the empty spaces between her body and the world.

_ ‘I look out for you, and you look out for me.’ _

_ ‘You promise?’ _

_ ‘I promise.’ _

Adora shook her head, clearing her thoughts. She jutted her chin toward one of the signs, waving for Glimmer to follow her. 

  
“It says this way takes us to the center of the complex.” She said.

The main room was expansive - high ceilings and wide walls closed them in, and a dozen different hallways fed into the chamber. Crystalline kiosks, desks, and keypads littered the room and a hologram flared to life on the deck in the center of the hub. 

“Greetings, Administrator.” The same clipped, female voice from earlier greeted her, booming from the speakers in the room, and the hologram’s lips jerked in a crude pantomime of speech. “What is your query?”

“There’s a global storm - what’s going on with Etheria?”

The hologram flickered. “What is your query?”

Adora blinked a few times, head dipping low as she pinched the bridge of her nose.

“Input not detected,” the voice clipped again. “Please try again.”

“What is happening to the planet?” Adora spoke slowly and loudly, tapping her boot as she crossed her arms over her chest.

“Query not recognized.” Adora shouted, spinning in circles and huffing as the hologram’s message repeated. “Please state your query.”

“What - is - happening - to - Etheria?” Adora snapped, leaning close to the ‘face’ of the display hologram, squaring up to it and clenching her fists.

“Etheria is a planet settled by the Masters of the Universe and mined as a source of magic; the planet is the official staging ground of the Heart of Etheria initiative, controlled by the means of the Runestones. When the runestones are balanced, Etheria functions as it should. An imbalance within the system poses significant threat to ideal function of the planet and associated systems. Would you like to know more?”

  
  


Adora groaned. “Is the  _ planet unbalanced _ ?”

“Answer to query not available, please speak to Program Director designated Light Hope.”The blonde punched the wall, yelping at the jarring and painful impact. 

If the ex-Horde soldier had been paying any closer attention to the Princess supposedly behind her, she would have noticed Glimmer inching closer toward the periphery of the room, eyeing up the data crystals that were mounted in relief against the wall terminals and other computers. And if she had noticed that, she definitely would have stopped Glimmer from making the terrible mistake of stealing the data crystal. But she hadn’t, and she didn’t.

“Alert - intruder detected! Preparing countermeasures.”

The room flassed a hazardous red and alarm klaxons blared. Adora whirled around, back to the hologram and held her sword in a low guard as she scanned the room for signs of a potential invader. 

Glimmer smiled and waved awkwardly, shimmering crystal in hand. Adora narrowed her eyes and pinched the bridge of her nose in exasperation. The Princess looked to her hand, saw the crystal in it, blanched and hid it behind her back. She waved again, this time with the other, nonthieving, hand.

“Seriously, Glimmer?” Adora shouted, pitching her arms in exasperation. “Look what you did!”

Glimmer’s arms crossed and she pouted. “I was just getting Bow a souvenir like he asked for!” She chuckled, dissolving in a puff of glitter before reappearing next to Adora’s side. “Besides… clearly the worst that’s gonna happen is the building will make angry noises at us! It’s not like some thousands of years old derelict castle has a security force, right?”

A formation of twelve foot tall spiders marched from the largest hallway, scanning the room.

“You really had to say it,” Adora rolled her eyes. “For the Honor of Grayskull!”

Blinding white light consumed the soldier, and when it subsided she stood, an eight foot tall, hulking warrior. She flashed a cocky smile and looked down at Glimmer.

“All right princes, just let the big girl take care of this one, okay?”

Glimmer remained quiet, glaring daggers up at She-Ra. The warrior leapt toward the spiders, swaggering toward them purposefully.

“All right guys, I know what you heard, but I, the administrator, say stand down,” she wiggled her eyebrows and jerked her head backwards. “Intruder  _ not  _ detected, just some dumb Princess doing a dumb Princess thing.”

“Hey!” Glimmer shouted.

The spiders shifted their gaze from the warrior to the Princess, and swiftly clambered past She-Ra, who tried to wrestle them back toward her. One of the spiders restrained her in a thick, sticky webbing before turning back toward Glimmer. A swarm of them closed in around her, encircling the Princess, whose back was now pressed against the wall.

“Yeah… Really handling it today, Adora!” Glimmer shouted, pushing herself further against the cold latticework of the wall with a shiver.

“Mmm tryinffff!” She-Ra’s muffled reply came from within the thick encasement of webbing she was wrestling against. A spider took a swipe at Glimmer with one of its razor sharp legs, and the Princess teleported onto its head.

“Try faster!” She shouted, disappearing as another claw came down, leaving it to crush the head of the spider she had just been perched on. She reappeared underneath another spider and shouted, “I’m okay!”

_ Snap! _

She-Ra broke free of her webbed restraints, and dove on the spiders with a fierce warcry, smashing and slashing through them as she fought her way to Glimmer, who had resorted to teleporting frantically in order to evade their wild strikes. The Princess of Power flipped one of the spiders, tearing its legs off and using them as javelins to skewer the others, making short work of the spiders that had not already destroyed themselves trying to swat their slippery target. 

Glimmer sighed in relief, sagging and looking down at the ground. She was tired. A hand, larger than life, rested on her shoulder and she looked up to see the too-bright face of She-Ra. The larger woman was displeased, and looked at her disparagingly.

“You really should have thought better than that, Glimmer. Put it back.”

“No way,” Glimmer snapped, recoiling and tucking the crystal into one of her pockets. “Putting it back won’t undetect me - it’ll just mean we’ll have to fight spiders and bring something less cool back to Bow!”

“You don’t know that!” She-Ra snapped.

“Yeah, well neither do you!” Glimmer retorted, breaking from her grasp. “Honestly, Adora, I thought you’d be less intense by now, or you know, like, grateful that you got your memories back so you didn’t have to be in the Horde again or something.”

She-Ra fizzled back to normal size, and Adora stood at Glimmer’s side, just behind her and facing out to the labyrinth of tunnels, still decked out in her Horde uniform. “Ohhh-ho-ho-ho!” She laughed sardonically. Just because I’m not with the Horde again doesn’t mean that I’m grateful to be a rebel now!”

Glimmer turned to face her, red in the face. She was angry now. “Seriously? Why are you such a contrarian? Can’t we just get on with this? We need to move before more of those spider things come for us!”

“For us?” Adora questioned blankly, eyes narrowing to slits asshe jabbed an accusatory finger at the Princess’s chest. “For  _ you _ . You stole something from this facility, and you won’t put it back. Those things see  _ you  _ as a threat, and they’ll see me as one too, as long as I’m protecting you.”

“Thank you, oh mighty She-Ra, for protecting me like we’re not part of the same Rebellion that I command! Thank you for doing this because it  _ clearly  _ isn’t your job!”

“Look…” Adora sighed, biting back the bile and anger at the back of her throat. “We need to find a way to get to Light Hope. The longer we wait the more of those things will come after that. And maybe even after Swift Wind and Bow. We have to get moving… So whatever’s going on right now,” she gestured vaguely between the two of them, “will have to wait. We have a mission.”

“Fine.” Glimmer relented. “As Commander of the Rebellion, I see that we have a mission here… But as your  _ friend _ , Adora, we’re not done with this conversation!”

“Fine by me,” the blonde snorted. She jerked forward, leaving Glimmer to glare exasperatedly at her back as she moved. “You coming or not,  _ Supreme Commander _ ?”

“Ugh! You are insufferable!” Glimmer huffed and stormed after her.

The two proceeded in silence down a narrow crimson hallway. The warning klaxons had muted themselves, but the lights still pulsed a deep and dim red. The silence between the two of them grew sharper, tense and brittle. The clank of their shoes on the floor thinned to the clang of steel, and the air between them turned to ice.

The door at the end of the hallways slid open to inky blackness. 

“Oh look, the room of infinite darkness!” Glimmer clipped. Spiders rushed down the hallway. She and Adora shared an uneasy glance.

“Let’s go,” the blonde barked, dragging the Princess by her cape and throwing her in the room, diving in after her. 

The door slammed shut, the lights came on, and the two of them were suddenly standing in the center of the Bright Moon Palace.


	17. The Promise Pt. 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Adora realizes where her priorities are, at the expense of her friendship with Glimmer.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey guys!! New update here, I was originally debating doing more stuff with Catra this chapter as well, but I think it's better saved for the next one, which should be taking place roughly simultaneously with this one. Thanks so much for all of your patience, and I'm super stoked to be delivering this! I think things are starting to get canon divergent enough that they're really becoming interesting and unpredictable, which means the fun is really starting! I hope you all enjoy.

“Woah,” Adora sighed. A group of guards stood in a loose ringlet around the throne room, and Queen Angella sat at the center, head in her hands. “Think this is real?” The blonde asked, looking at Glimmer quizzically.

“Uhhh haha,” Glimmer chuckled, waving a hand in front of an unresponsive guard. “They do that to other people, but never to  _ me _ .” She wrinkled her nose in faux-amusement. 

The two of them shared a terse laugh, “Well what is this then?”

Glimmer shrugged, crossing her arms and shifting her weight to one foot. “I dunno, you tell me,  _ administrator _ .” She cocked an eyebrow playfully.

“I I don- wha- I’m not actually  _ in charge  _ of this place!” Adora stuttered, whirling on her heel and scoffing as she closed in on Glimmer.

“Suuuure you’re not,” She smiles coyly, and her fingers tap on her arm. 

Bow burst into the room, arms full with cakes and treats from the kitchen. He was looking over his shoulder, shouting. “Come on guys! We gotta get back to base before the soldiers overrun us and take back our cargo!”

Glimmer burst into a fit of giggles, “I remember this!” She crowed, “This has to be some kind of like, memory room or something!” 

“Yeah,” Adora laughed, “I wonder if this is the one where I had a gun.”

Another Glimmer and Adora appeared in the room in a burst of glitter. Adora held a stick in her arms loosely, as if it were a rifle.

“Yuh-ess! It’s Gunny!” Adora squealed, pointing at her makeshift rifle in unabashed glee. Glimmer laughed and shook her head.

Memory-Adora checked the corners of the room, and pulled the trigger in some random direction, making  _ ‘pew pew’  _ sounds as she did. 

“Tango down!” She barked, turning on her heel and breaking in a commando roll toward the group. “More on the way, we gotta to get outta here, man!” 

“Uh, guys,” Bow started, pointing at nothing, far above Glimmer and Adora’s heads. “ _ Monster! _ ” He shouted, eyes wide in mock horror. His voice cracked as he shouted in play terror, backing up against the wall.

Glimmer banged her makeshift broom-staff against the ground rhythmically, “All hands on me, gang! I’m going to teleport us back to base!” 

Bow and Adora dove toward her, laying their hands on her shoulders and dissolving into nothingness.

The scene changed, all three of them were on the bed in Glimmer’s room. 

“All right,” Adora grinned slyly, looking down at their pilfered treats. 

“To the victor go the spoils!” Glimmer shouted gleefully, shimmying her shoulders and giggling.

Bow looked at the girls and raised a hand. “Guys, I think we forgot the forks.”

“What?” Adora crinkled her nose in confusion. “We have hands, don’t we?”   
  


Bow gasped audibly, and Glimmer cackled as she shouted, “Adora, you  _ savage _ !”

The blonde looked at the Princess in confusion as she unboxed the cake and dug her hands into it, scooping a handful of it into her mouth. “Iw’m pewfectwy ciwiwizezd,” she mouthed around the sweet.

“Ughhhhh,” Adora facepalmed, “I’m so embarrassed! This is really what I’m like, isn’t it?” 

Glimmer gasped around her laughter as she spoke. “Just tell the room to stop! This is obviously some weird simulation or something!”   
  


“I - no, I can’t just tell the room to stop doing this!” She huffed in mock annoyance, “obviously nothing in here is  _ listening  _ to me!” 

“Hey, that was  _ really _ passive aggressive!” Glimmer shoved the blonde playfully, crossing her arms and mock scowling. “You’re really going to be like this when I was the one who saved you?”

_ That hit a nerve. _

Just like that, they were back to fighting. “Oh,” Adora huffed, eyebrow twitching. She ran her fingers through her increasingly disheveled hair as she walked in a circle. “You  _ didn’t  _ save me! An old woman in the middle of the woods gave me back my memories.”

She whirled around, looming over the Princess. “You are another child soldier; but not because you were abducted like everyone in the Horde. You’re just fighting a war because your own  _ mother  _ is too afraid to! You couldn’t save a kitten from a tree without needing to run back to some magical stone and recharge!” She hooted, leaning in closer. 

When she spoke again her voice was a low growl. “In fact, I think you’re the whole reason we’re in this mess! If you and Bow could have just  _ sucked it up  _ you could have avoided getting captured by Scorpia. And then I wouldn’t have lost my memories, and I wouldn’t be stuck here again -”

_ without Catra. _

Adora’s eyes widened, she gasped softly, and looked down to the floor, tears blurring her vision. Glimmer backed away from the blonde, and when Adora looked up, she saw the Princess’s face covered in a heated blush, furious tears streaming down her face. 

“I’m sorry,” she started numbly. The words felt foreign in her mouth. “It’s not your fault, I’m stressed and I’m sad and I did something really,  _ really  _ stupid and I don’t know when I’ll get the chance to make it right. And I’m hurt and scared and taking out on people, it’s not right and I’m sorry, Glimmer. I didn’t mean to lash out at you like that.”

“We’re supposed to be friends, Adora.” The words were soft, quivering, a dark anger coiled underneath them “How can you just treat me like this because you’re going through something that I don’t understand?”

Glimmer opened her mouth to say something else, and was silenced as the scene in front of them began playing.

“There’s no fighting them… no fighting the Horde…. What am I going to say to Glimmer?” The Queen’s voice was ancient and brittle, her brows were creased and Adora saw the beginnings of wrinkles on her flawless, pale skin. The same wrinkles and stress lines Adora had mapped late at night, when she was walking the halls and would find the Queen staring at murals of her husband with some far off look in her eyes, the nights the blonde would sooner cling to the shadows than come out and face what the Horde had done to people on the other side. Not again.

Not after the first time, when she had just broken the bed in her quarters and stumbled upon the Queen all by herself, looking beyond the mural and into the past. She had seemed untouchable until that moment, when the harsh palace torches shadowed the creases in her forehead, brow, and cheeks, and she had realized Princess were not dogs of war. Glimmer had always seemed a hotheaded powermonger, obsessed with victory and strength, but that night Angella had been far away, broken, a woman in mourning. After she had been warned not to break her trust, and found herself walking away from the woman, Adora had realized such a scene played out in every normal life. She wasn’t a Rebel or a Queen, not even a simple soldier or warrior in that instant - simply a wife missing her spouse.

She had wondered that first night, huddled up in Glimmer’s bed and pretending the sleeping Princess beside her was somebody else, if Catra would stay up that late some nights, climbing up to the Forge and staring at the blank, smoggy sky thinking of her. She wondered if Catra would ever look at the sky and imagine, like she did, that they were looking at the same nothing as each other. She always missed Catra worse at nights, sleeping with her legs tucked up to her chest, pretending like if she woke up in the morning, she’d be there, curled up at the foot of her bed, snoring.

“Guards, you may speak freely.” The Queen pinched the bridge of her nose between two dainty fingers. “I need counsel.”

The valkyries exchanged uneasy glances, looking back and forth amongst themselves before one finally piped up. “It would buy you sometime,” she started, clearing her throat before she continued, “to say he is leading a campaign on one of the distant fronts.”

The Queen smiled sadly, “I can’t keep the truth from her. She is nosy and headstrong, brave and curious like her father is…  _ was _ .”

Adora’s heart twisted as she realized what this was. Glimmer, beside her, dissolved in silent tears. Adora wished Bow were here, wished she knew what to say, wished her hands didn’t seem to be glued to her sides so she could take the girl beside her into her arms.

_ Everything you touch, you ruin _ , a cruel voice in her head hissed.  _ This pain is because of you, because of where you have been. You cannot help her. _

Adora was silent and still as Glimmer wept.

“We had better get her in here. Let the Princess know I am calling her, and then, guards, I would have you leave us in peace.” The Queen smiled sadly, and her eyes shimmered.

The room dissolved in pixels, and reconstituted itself. Glimmer stood before the throne, and the Queen stood, walking down the stairs, toward her daughter.

“Your majesty,” Glimmer curtsied, looking down in subservience. “You wanted to see me?”

Queen Angella looked around the room, smiling. “Darling, there is no royal court here. I have called you here as your mother, not your Queen.”

Glimmer stood up, regarding her mother with confusion. “Yes, mom. Where is everyone? Where is dad?”

Angella’s smile twisted on her lips. Beautiful, pearly tears streamed down her face, and she dove for her daughter, wrapping her in her arms. 

“Mom,  _ please _ ,” Glimmer sniffled, and her voice was muffled against her mother’s skin. “Tell me where he is!”

Queen Angella was silent for a long moment, holding herself close to her daughter as she cried silently. She bent low to the ground, getting onto her knees. She pushed Glimmer to arm’s distance, smiling at her daughter ruefully. Her eyes were bloodshot, tears continued streaming down them as she looked to her daughter, who had begun crying in earnest, seeing her mother like this.

“I am so, so sorry, my love,” she whispered hoarsely.

Adora’s hand found its way into her mouth, and she bit her fingers to keep from sobbing audibly.

“Your father is a brave man. In this last battle against the Horde, he made a sacrifice many brave men do.”

Glimmer’s face twisted and she sobbed harder, diving into her mother’s arms for comfort. 

“Mom,” she choked out hoarsely, “he can’t be gone! He can’t be.”

“Glimmer,” Angella’s voice trembled, and she swallowed thickly. “Your father, my husband… he is dead. Killed in battle against the Horde.”

The Princess howled, squeezing herself further into her mother’s embrace. 

The real Glimmer bounded up to Adora, weeping and glaring up at the blonde from a nose’s distance away. Her voice was raw and low as she growled. “It doesn’t matter what stupid thing you might have done. The Horde took my father, Adora.  _ Nothing  _ that could have happened to you compares to that. That’s why we fight. To keep them from destroying any other families.” She turned, walking around the empty room, reaching out to touch her mother, only for her hand to slip through the hologram.. She raised her arms defiantly, and when she opened her mouth again, her shouts, all venom and contempt, echoed against the high marble walls of the palace. “But what would you know about families? What was it you said,  _ you’re just another fucking child soldier _ ?”

“Glimmer, wait -” Adora protested weakly.

“No, Adora!” The Princess screamed, “you  _ wait _ ! You couldn’t fucking understand if you tried, you never had a family growing up, did you? You couldn’t understand what you just saw if you tried. I’m not like you…” She took a breath, “I’m not a fucking  _ child soldier _ , I wasn’t raised for war like you! I didn’t start fighting until my father died, because I had no other choice! Because my mother was ready to bury her head in the sand and wait until the world ended around us rather than risk losing anyone else. Who I am today is who the world made me be,” she hissed. 

The room changed again. 

Catra and Adora stood in The Black Garnet Chamber, a maskless Shadow Weaver stood loomed over the two of them, fastening her faceplate back to her head.

“Get  _ out _ !” Shadow Weaver roared at the two of them. When the two began to run, she grabbed Catra in a fearsome display of dark magic, choking her as she lifted her to face her again. “You can stay,” she hissed as she pulled the magicat closer.

“You, whelp, have been nothing but a nuisance to me since the day we met! Do not mistake my grace in allowing you to remain here for fondness. You are here because Adora seems to care for you, and for no other reason. But if you  _ ever  _ do anything to jeopardize her future, to drag her down to  _ your  _ level…”

Shadow Weaver drew in closer, and Catra’s feeble attempts at breath grew quicker, more frantic.    


“I will not hesitate to dispose of you myself.” 

Catra’s gasps slowed, eyelids growing heavier. She was losing consciousness.

“Let her go!” Adora’s voice cut through the quiet and she shoved the sorceress, spreading her arms out wide. She stood between the two of them, protecting the magicat behind her. 

“Your singular valor has been noted, Adora. I’m impressed with your courage - enough to stand up to me. There’s a fine line between bravery and bravado, and I would advise you stay aware of which side you are on.” Shadow Weaver ran a hand down the side of Adora’s head, playing with a loose lock of blonde hair before trailing a clawed finger down the side of the girl’s face. Adora flinched in fear, looking to the ground as she braced for a strike that did not come. 

The witch sighed in mock tiredness, and when she spoke again her voice was saccharine. “You must do a better job of keeping your pet in line, or else I don’t know  _ what  _ I’ll do to her. Now… run along children.” 

The past versions of the girls ran, and Adora followed them back to their barracks, leaving Glimmer behind. As she ran, Adora realized how invasive it was that Glimmer had gotten to see Catra like that, pinned down by the dark sorceress. Righteous fury burned her cheeks as she imagined shouting back at the Princess, telling her that she knew nothing of blood, of promises, of two people who would look out for one another no matter what. Two girls who would stay together until the end of the world.

With another sharp twist in her heart, she realized that she didn’t know much about it either. Since she had found the sword, Adora had left the Horde to play rebel, left Catra behind too. How much must it have stung? Catra had always asked to run away with Adora, and the blonde had always refused, saying she couldn’t live with the thought of not being able to protect her, keep Shadow Weaver from punishing her if they were ever found. But what had happened when Catra ran back home without the witch’s golden child? Catra had faced the music, all alone. Adora hadn’t been there, hadn’t protected her, hadn’t in the slightest bit lived up to the oath she had promised to lead her life by. 

No, what did she know about promises and blood either? She had put the whole world in front of Catra. Leaving when she had the sword and a rebel army to run to instead of leaving every time Catra had begged her to run away with her… Catra must have felt like the last person in the world Adora would have wanted to be around. She must have felt like every time she wanted to chuck it all and run away, have it just be Adora and her forever and been shot down it was because Adora couldn’t handle her without some other buffer in the way. Because Adora would rather anything else but her. She had said as much, said she knew Adora was going to leave her again as soon as she got her memories back, got the sword back. And Adora had proved her wrong. She had told Catra to go away even before then. 

She burst into the barracks, where Catra had burrowed into a tangle of sheets and pillows, sobbing quietly.

“Catra?” A familiar voice, her own, called out. Child Adora ran around the corner of the bunks, running her hands along the blanket and pushing the sheets back to reveal more of Catra’s face.

The magicat hissed. Tears prickled at real-Adora’s eyes even as she smiled, looking down at the two of them.

“Catra, it’s okay,” the other Adora offered her a small smile, sitting on the bed next to her, taking one of her hands. “It’s just me.”

It doesn’t matter what they do to us,” she started, “what  _ she  _ does to us, you know? You look out for me… and I look out for you…” The other Adora wrapped an arm around Catra affectionately, laying a hand on her chest.

Real-Adora mouthed along as her past self spoke again, “Nothing really bad can happen as long as we have each other.”

And that’s where she’d gone wrong. Everything had gone to shit because she left Catra behind. She needed to get her back.

“You promise?” Catra’s voice was hopeful as she looked up to Adora, tangling her hands in Adora’s uniform.

“I promise,” the Adoras breathed in unison.

“Now come on,” child Adora smiled, pulling Catra into an embrace. “Let’s get dinner, you’ll feel better if you eat, okay?”

“Okay, but can we stay like this for a little first?” 

“Okay,” she smiled.

The room faded out, and another memory began projecting.

“No,” Adora spoke. She was crying, and her eyes glinted with resolve. She knew what she needed to do. “I don’t need to see anything else. I’m getting out of here.”

_ “For the Honor of Grayskull!”  _

She-Ra stood in the middle of the room, scowling. She swiped her sword at the ground, and the chasm broke the simulacrum, which had been a hologram of Entrapta’s lair in Dryl. She and Hordak stood together, side by side as they eyed screens of an Etheria in chaos before they fizzled out. 

“I’m going after Catra,” she promised herself, demolishing the chamber as she searched for the door out and back, reaching out to Swift Wind over their telepathic bond.

Glimmer appeared in the wreckage, shouting at Adora, covering her head with her arms as she fended herself off from the debris and explosions. Bow and Swift Wind came in tow, each trying to protect themselves as well.

“She-Ra, what’re you doing?!” Glimmer shouted.

Bow chimed in, his voice breaking. “You’ll bring this whole place down on us!” 

“I’m keeping a promise. I needed to find a way out!” She started, looking down toward Swift Wind, “I need your help, Swifty! We’re going to find Catra, and stop whatever is going on with the planet!” She mounted the steed. “Glimmer, Bow, hop on. I’m taking you two back to Bright Moon before I go. It’s not safe for you here, not with the bots that are looking for you.”

Bow nodded, climbing on Swift Wind’s back. Glimmer pursed her lips and climbed on, wordlessly.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks so much for reading! As always feel free to leave kudos, bookmark, and leave comments! It makes what I do as rewarding as it is! Thank you all so so much for reading again, and I'll see y'all on the next update!!! Additionally, please join my She-Ra/writer's discord! https://discord.gg/8wUXTTdAmf


	18. Abandonment

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hey guys! It's been a bit, this one took a lot of time to write! It's really emotionally heavy imo. I suppose I should warn about transphobia on Shadow Weaver's part, but it's mostly implied rather than outright written. Catra reminsces on past time with Adora, and confronts Shadow Weaver in the cell, being left behind again in the process.

Catra and Adora sat together at their bunk, and the magicat clutched at a vial of serum and a set of injection needles. Her hands were trembling.

“I’m so proud of you, Catra.” Adora breathed, “it’s going to be okay now. We can do this. This is the first step toward an incredible rest of your life.”

“I… I’m scared,” Catra mumbled indistinctly. “What if it’s a mistake?”

“What do we do when Shadow Weaver finds out? She’s going to kill me.”

Adora held her hands up placatingly, “No, Catra, you know I won’t let that happen. We promised to look out for each other.”

“What if you only promised to get something from me?”

Adora looked at Catra in stunned silence. She’d never said anything like that before. Not that she could remember. Catra’s trust in her had been unshakeable for years, hadn’t it?

“Catra, what do you mean?” Adora slowly brought her arms to the magicat’s shoulders, pulling the girl towards her and wrapping her in a gentle embrace. “I’ve never wanted anything from you except for you to stay with me, to let me protect you.”

“What if you go someplace I can’t? What if I mess up, what if I do something that makes you leave to get away from me? Huh, Adora?” Catra’s eyes brimmed with tears, “I know someday I’ll stop giving you something you want and you’ll leave me.”

Adora’s breath caught in her throat and she squeezed Catra closer, sighing. “Catra, that’s not how it works. All I want is for you to stay close to me, and as long as you try to do that, nothing else matters.”

Tossing the vial and injections halfway across the bed, Catra fisted her hands in Adora’s uniform, nuzzling further into her shoulder. “But what if you only say that because right now you don’t know what it is you want from me? What if you don’t know until I stop doing it, and by then you’ve decided you hate me and I can’t get you back? I can handle Shadow Weaver, as scary as she can be, but-”

“Hey, hey, hey,” Adora shushed the muffled Catra, rubbing circles on her back as she rocked her back and forth. “You never have to worry about that. People can be kind to you without some ulterior motive, Catra. You trust me right?”

Slowly, hesitantly, Catra nodded.

“Then trust me when I said I would always look out for you, okay? You’re my girl, and I’ve got you.”

Catra’s stomach twisted in knots, and her head spun at the words of affirmation. 

“Okay,” she whispered in the girl’s shoulder.

“Yeah,” Adora kissed the top of her head, and the magicat groaned in mock-disgust.    
  


“Oh shut up, weirdo. I know you like me!”

“I do  _ not _ ,” Catra snarled.

“Yeah, yeah,” Adora smiled, waving her wrist. “Now take your shot, you’ve waited long enough to start doing this.”

“Okay, okay, I need a second! I’m scared of needles,” Catra pouted.

Adora laughed, and the magicat shoved her, yelping a sharp 'shut up!'

* * *

Catra’s eyes fluttered open, and she stared at the guards. It was shift change, again. That was… number eighteen? No, nineteen.

Nineteen guards at half hour shifts meant she couldn’t have been there for much longer than nine hours, not a long time at all. But ravenous hunger had finally settled over her. She hadn’t eaten much the last few days, in no small part for the guilt of not telling Adora what had been done to her sooner. The complex emotions of her return had soured her stomach, and it wasn’t until the blonde broke her heart and she found herself thrown in a cell with her childhood torturer that the need to eat her feelings away cropped up.

_ Adora _ . 

Catra narrowed her eyes in the black, silencing a pained groan as she paced the cell. Her knees were sore from standing, and her tailbone was sore from sitting. The cell was dingy, wet, and void of light save for the neon green light of the laser gate. There was a lavatory at the far corner of the chamber, but Shadow Weaver’s restraints had not let the witch get close to it to relieve herself, not that she would have likely been able to stand anyway. A searing fever consumed the dark magician, and her robes were splotched in patches of cold sweat and vomit. She shivered, bound to the wall, and groaned as she rolled her head back and forth listlessly. 

The room stank like rotten eggs and ammonia and bile.

Catra grimaced and halted her pacing. A complex pity overwhelmed her as she looked at the older woman, the kind she couldn’t separate from an ugly, sadistic glee that made her feel just as evil as the ailing witch.

Sure she had hurt her but… she’d shown her some kindness since they’d been locked in here together. Trust… could be worth it, couldn’t it? She had shown at least some sort of kindness to Catra since they had been locked together. 

Many years ago Adora had promised her sometimes kindness wasn’t a trick, or a means to an end. And now that she was gone again, it meant Catra had to trust someone else to genuinely be kind to her. The magicat desperately wanted to believe Shadow Weaver’s affection just then was anything other than one of her tricks, the kind she’d played on Catra in the past.. 

Maybe now… maybe if Adora stayed gone, she would love Catra instead? She had said they would escape together.

Moving on sore legs and creaky joints, Catra padded toward and sat at the far side of the cell and ripped a swatch of fabric from her leggings before crawling toward the witch.

“Here, I’m gonna wipe some of the sweat off you,” she whispered, gingerly swiping the cloth across Shadow Weaver’s neck. She moved to take her mask off, and the witch jerked her head away.

“No,” she grunted, “I… do not wi-” she took a breath. “Wish to be seen.”

Catra nodded, settling back. That made sense, of course she wouldn’t. Shadow Weaver hated to see her own face.

She’d seen her like this before, on the occasions she’d snuck into or been locked in the Black Garnet Chamber, but never this bad. There were days Shadow Weaver would glide into the room, wait for her thick steel doors to shut, and sink to her knees, starved for the magic of the Runestone. There had been mornings Catra, watching from inside a cage, observed the dark magician rise and stumble out of bed, groaning and clutching at her head until she could touch the enchanted gem. 

Once, when Catra had hidden in the ceiling and watched, she had seen the witch stagger into the chamber, sink to her knees as the doors shut. She had watched Shadow Weaver groan, crawling on her hands and knees to the runestone, babbling to herself incomprehensibly once her arms failed her. The witch had kept a pin on her, one she had snapped in her hands then. Golden dust, pure magic, had sunk into the flesh of her hands, clung to her robes and skin. And she had stood on shaky knees, then, travelling to the center of the room on borrowed power before she tapped back into the Black Garnet with a relieved groan.

Catra had always known Shadow Weaver could suffer when she used too much power at a time, emptying her reserves, but she’d never seen the magic sickness this bad before. She was in a withdrawal, enduring an illness of deprivation that would only get worse with time.

_ Serves her right _ , Catra mused,  _ I can only wonder how many people she’s stepped on to get that power. I’m glad she lost it. _

Shadow Weaver’s head snapped up and her eyes bored into Catra’s. The magicat found herself flinching and backpedalling into the darkness, even though she knew the witch had no ability to see her thoughts, let alone hurt her. Not without the Black Garnet, she reminded herself, _ not anymore _ .

“I was not… always as you have seen me,” the sorceress panted, “Catra.”

A strange terror gripped the girl. When she spoke again, the voice bouncing against the echoing steel of the cell hardly sounded like hers. 

“Then what changed?”

Silence laid itself between them, and even the constant hum of the Fright Zone’s machinery seemed to hush. The heavy hand of the quietude seemed to settle an open palm on Catra’s chest, and another half-clenched one over her throat.Catra’s breaths came secretly, heavy and languid as the air, heavier than it had been before, bore down on them. 

The growl of her stomach broke the dim stillness, and Catra found herself jerking in surprise, a terrified hiss wrenching itself from her mouth.

Shadow Weaver chuckled dryly, head lolling to the side as she retched.

If Catra hadn’t been so worried for the woman in front of her, she’d probably have laughed. She should have laughed. She hated her, didn’t she? Wasn’t she supposed to, after everything that she’d done to her? 

She crawled back to the woman, pulling the thick strands of her hair behind her head, massaging her temples and the back of her head like Adora used to do hers.

_ Adora _ . Catra’s heart twisted painfully.  _ She doesn’t want me. _

“It isn’t so easy, child.” The sorceress tutted in the near pitch darkness, breaking the girl out of her reverie. Catra focused on the outline of the witch’s profile, cut by the green light of the laser door, and watched her head sink to the hollow of her chest. “Nothing ever was for me.”

“And so you made my life miserable because of it?”

Shadow Weaver’s head bolted up, and it took a moment for Catra to realize it was her own voice that pierced the darkness. A bolt of anxiety quivered through her, frizzing her tail and stiffening her shoulders. Now she had done it.

The dark magician laughed quietly, bitterly. Catra’s muscles tensed even further. Her back hunched and her tail flicked as she raised her hands up to her head and -

“You remind me too much of me. I had to fight for my place in life…” she coughed dryly, settling further into the cold steel of the wall, rolling her cuffed wrists vaguely, perhaps trying to alleviate the pain the shackles caused. “Nothing can be easy for you, it never was for me.”

Catra didn’t know how to feel. On the one hand, that meant Shadow Weaver might be punishing herself through Catra, but on the other… Did the old witch really see her like an extension of herself, not like her own person?

Shadow Weaver couldn’t even acknowledge her own individuality, could she?

The girl’s eyes blazed in the dark, and Catra began to realize exactly how she felt in this moment.

Mad. Really, really mad. 

“So you just take it out on me because someone else took it out on you? Because making yourself feel better is worth making me feel worse? That’s sick, Shadow Weaver.”

Awash in sickly green light, Shadow Weaver turned to face her, and her eyes narrowed to impossibly sharp slits. Her voice, reedy and broken in her vomit-blistered throat was dripping venom as she spoke. “I punish you like an animal because of you. You  _ pretended  _ to be something you’re not, and so I punish you like what you’ve chosen to be.”

“Pretended? Pretended to be what? I am who I have always been,” Catra’s voice was incredulous, and her heart was pounding in her throat. She paced the corners of the room anxiously.

“From the moment I first looked into your mind I knew you were nothing but a selfish, petty, waste. You choose to deny  _ what  _ you are to follow in Adora’s footsteps, when you two could never come anything close to being the same.”

You will neither be the woman she is, or any other kind” Shadow Weaver sneered. “Neve.  _ Degenerate fool. _ ”

“I-I don’t want to be anything like her,” Catra stuttered, “Everything I’ve done, every choice I’ve made, to be I choose am today… It’s because of who I really am inside…”

“You deceive yourself and everyone you present yourself to. I should have never left you around my child so you could  _ infect _ her with your impertinent ways. She has left twice because of  _ you  _ and your charades, your caricatures of what we are.”

“Hahaha - me?” Catra laughed cruelly, “she left because of  _ you _ , because of your overbearing, stubborn, fucking pig-headed care! You played so many head games with us the first time she saw a place she had a purpose other than the one  _ you gave her _ , the first time anyone could treat her with anything resembling consistent, normal amounts of kindness and dignity, she  _ ran _ !”

“You lie again, Catra. How could you know Adora any better than me when you could never touch her mind the way I do? Or even the way even any other, less powerful sorceress could?” Shadow Weaver was scowling under her mask, coughing before she spoke again. “Even if you were correct, that would mean she left you too.  _ The first time anyone could treat her with kindness and dignity _ , you said?”

“Oh right,” the magician corrected herself, chuckling like this was light conversation, “Kindness and dignity on a regular basis. So you must have been kind to her, except for when she disappointed you and you took those privileges away to punish her? “Now who does that sound like?” 

Catra was silent, and her stomach flipped and twisted inside of her.  _ It sounded like Shadow Weaver _ . She steadfastly refused speech, hoping the old crone would stop talking. She slid down the wall and wrapped her knees around her chest, tucking her tail over her feet.

“That’s okay, I know you well enough to be able to predict you’d say that description fits me. But perhaps you are only seeing reflections of your own inner demons, Catra? You’re no better than me.”

Silent tears swept down the girl’s face in the darkness, and she wiped at them furiously. She wouldn’t cry, she refused to. Even if Shadow Weaver couldn’t see it in the dark. 

At the next shift change, Force Captain Octavia entered the Cell, and spoke briefly with Shadow Weaver, taking the witch’s hand in her own and sliding a pin in her hands. Catra watched curiously, was this what she’d been talking about for their escape?

Shadow Weaver snapped the pin in her hands, and magic trailed up her arms.

Understanding dawned on the magicat.

Shadow Weaver barked at the magicat, “Quick, Catra, knock Octavia out!” 

Startled, exhausted, trusting in the dark magician’s intent, Catra did as she was told. Sure, she’d said something really hurtful just then. Sure, she’d hurt her all her life. But she could change, couldn’t she?

Catra still wanted to believe what Adora had taught her as a kid, that kindness was okay sometimes.

She pounced at Octavia, bashing her head against the wall as Shadow Weaver and the pin disappeared in a twist of the light, leaving Catra behind.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you guys so much for reading! Please continue leaving kudos, comments, and bookmarks! It seriously makes my day every single time!!!! Additionally, please consider joining my discord server! https://discord.gg/9fmC992xh5


	19. Soft Defection

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Adora so-so leaves the Rebellion to try and find Catra, still struggling to untangle her duty from her desires. Catra gets ready to escape from her cell.

A shadow in the tenebrous skyline swoops toward the top of the highest tower of the Bright Moon Palace, coming to light as it approached the soft glow of the Moonstone. Rainbow wings fluttered and dust scattered away in ringlets as Swift Wind’s four hooves touched down on the cobblestone. Two pairs of boots  _ clunked  _ against the ground on either side of the steed.

“Adora, I don’t understand. You’re  _ She-Ra _ , you can’t just leave the Rebellion! Not after we just got you back.” Glimmer’s hands were clasped together, pressed into her chest. She looked up at the blonde, who had remained on Swift Wind’s back, and her eyes were pleading as she spoke again. “Please, Adora, you have no idea how badly we need you here.”

Bow was silent, staring at his own feet.

Adora’s eyes shut, brows knitting in the center of her forehead.  _ Need _ .

That had always been a funny word. Shadow Weaver _needed_ her to control Catra, control herself. The Sword had _needed_ her, that’s what Light Hope had said in the visions. Etheria _needed_ her. The Rebellion needed her, just like the Horde had needed her. Which is to say not at all.

They had needed the soldier, needed the warrior, needed the Force Captain, needed the Princess, needed She-Ra.

Horde, Rebellion, Shadow Weaver, Angella and Glimmer… No matter the institution or the people within it, they hadn’t ever really needed her. No, Adora may have had a place in the Rebellion, but that did not mean the Rebellion really needed her. In fact, she realized, she wouldn’t have had a place within the Rebellion if not for her power as She-Ra All they wanted was what she could do, what she could offer. Her loyalty to causes, to superiors, not truly  _ Adora.  _

But Catra needed Adora. 

“No,” her voice was tight in her throat, “you don’t. You never have. You need She-Ra, and I’m not her.”

“Uh,” Glimmer’s eyebrow twitched. “Magical sword in your hands! Magical words you can say! You can be She-Ra anytime you want!”

“No.” Adora shook her head. “I can use the Sword, I can be She-Ra, but that doesn’t change who I  _ really am  _ without the sword. Adora,  _ not  _ She-Ra. I have to do something for me right now, Glimmer. I’m so sorry, but I promise just because I’m going back for someone doesn’t mean I’m not still trying to do what’s right.” 

“What’s right? I can’t believe you think going back for some Horde asshole is what’s right!” Glimmer shouted, feral. “You saved us all in Thaymour… It was always said She-Ra would restore balance to Etheria in its hour of greatest need… not run off for nothing in the middle of the end of the world!”

“I’m not… You don’t -” Adora stuttered. “I’m  _ not  _ leaving Etheria behind, I’m still going to fight-”

“Just not here, at Bright Moon? The Horde is behind this! While you’re off doing  _ whatever  _ they’re going to be rolling through the woods and demolishing the capitol! And you’re just  _ okay with that _ ?”

Adora stuttered, raising her hands placatingly, “I - no, Glimmer you don’t understand, I-” 

“Why are you doing this Adora?” Bow spoke quietly, looking away from the blonde. “I won’t try to stop you… I just need to know the reason you’re leaving us behind.”

“I…” Adora started haltingly, taking a moment to consider her own words. “There’s someone - a girl - I left her behind, even though I had promised to look out for her no matter what. I have to go find her and make good on my promise.”

Bow nodded solemnly. “I get it, Adora. I really do. I hope you get her back, it sounds like she really needs you. We’ll do what we can to make it work. Just…” He sighed. “Don’t forget Etheria could sure use your help too.” 

“There’s no way we  _ can  _ fix this on our own, Bow! Not without She-Ra. But she’s leaving us behind, just like she left the Horde!” Glimmer snarled, face red with anger and the hot, splotchy tears streaming down her cheeks. 

“Hey, that’s not fair! You don’t -”

“Adora, Glimmer, please,” Bow wrapped his arms around the girl, stroking her hair as she cried into his shoulder, murmuring incomprehensibly. He fixed his best puppy dog eyes on Adora, and the blonde relented, sighing and swallowing her retort. 

“I don’t know how we’re gonna fix this, Adora,” he gestured out toward the blackened sky, the torrents of lightning, and the freezing trees of the Whispering Woods, “not without She-Ra.”

“Yeah, I understand.” Adora whispered. “If the Horde is behind this, I’ll do what I can to stop it while I’m gone. But I can’t return to Bright Moon, not without Catra.” 

Bow nodded. “That’s all I could ask for. Thank you, Adora.”

The blonde nodded, eyes awash with tears. “I’m gonna start at the Woods, make sure the Horde isn’t poking at the edges of it, see if Catra’s out there. If I can find the skiff I took in, I’ll have Swift Wind come back without me and then I’m going to the Fright Zone to find Catra and end this madness. Once I’m in it’s gonna be better that I move alone, don’t try to contact me at any point.”

Swift Wind nuzzled the blonde speaking quietly, “I understand, boss. I’ll hold down the fort while you’re gone.”

“Thank you, Swifty. We have to get going, there’s a lot of ground to cover. We’re gonna start at the skiff, retrace our steps when we went through the woods.”

“Gotcha!” Swift Wind nodded, flapping his wings and lifting off the ground, ex-soldier on his back.

Glimmer stared venomous daggers at the duo as they disappeared in the dark sky. She looked up at Bow, whose arms still held her. She sighed.

“When I vouched for her it was because I thought she would put the Rebellion first,” her voice quivered with rage. “She has no place in Bright Moon anymore.”

“Glimmer, don’t be so angry. She left behind everything she’s ever known twice. It makes sense she’d have some loose ends, we can wait for her to come back.”

“No, Bow, we can’t! Not if what she left behind matters more to her than all of Etheria!” The Princess roared, shoving the archer back. “What we do is for the good of Etheria, and that  _ has  _ to matter more than anything else! You don’t get it, you never have!”

“Glimmer, please!” Bow was begging, reaching back out to the scowling, diminutive girl. “We can’t fight each other, not now. The world is ending around us, and if the Horde really is behind it all we have much bigger problems!”

“Urghhhh,” Glimmer groaned, “I hate how right you are! I hate that I can’t just get pissed off with the world because  _ She-Ra abandoned us _ ,” she waved her fist at the sky angrily, “and that we have to worry about securing Bright Moon instead!” 

“It’s never easy being the Commander of the Rebellion,” he quipped. “Come on, let’s get inside. We’ll debrief with the Queen and get something to eat. An empty stomach never helped anyone save the world.”

Glimmer sighed, half laughing. What would she do without a friend like Bow?

The minutes bled together as they raced across the skyline, and Adora’s heart was in her throat. She hoped Catra was still in the woods, that would make it easier to find her.

What would she say? That she was sorry, that she was taking it back? That looking out for Catra should have meant keeping her closer to her side? Would making good on the promise mean she had to throw away being a Rebel just to stay at Catra’s side? 

What did her promise mean to her? And what did it mean to Catra?

These last few months she’d been acting like fighting this war was worth more than staying close to the girl she loved more than anything; and for what? So she could play the part of a hero for people who needed something she could do?

Catra never cared about what Adora could offer her, even as kids. It had always been  _ Adora  _ she’d cared about. Whether they’d sit together for every meal, spar together in training sessions, whether or not they fell asleep talking to each other instead of anyone else.

Catra had wanted her, and everyone else had just wanted what she could do. And Adora had left her behind. Being needed had mattered more than being wanted to Adora, and she’d broken her best friend’s heart twice for it.

Surely there was some way to go back to Catra, to make her understand, some way to make sure the two of them kept looking out for each other no matter what, stayed together no matter what. She hoped it wasn’t too late to show the girl she was wanted, needed desperately.

Adora and Swift Wind touched down at the edge of the Whispering Woods, next to the skiff she and Catra had taken on their voyage in. 

Remorse filled her as she looked back at it. Their whole way to the woods, when they’d arrived here, all the time in the forest except…  _ that _ night…Catra had been convinced Adora would leave her her behind again. Adora’s heart panged in her chest. 

“Well, she can’t have gone back to the Fright Zone, right?” Swift Wind’s voice broke her out of her reverie. Adora shook her head, returning to the present.

She sunk to a knee, observing the dirt, the antigrav generators on the skiffs always left telltale indents in the ground, both during the skiff’s operational use and when they were shut off and the craft sunk to the dirt. “I’m not sure,” she mumbled, looking back at the no man’s land at the edge of the woods. She ran her hands along the skiff that she had taken in with the other girl absently, lost in thought again.

How many times did Catra and her approach the woods in the last couple days? One, right? So why did there seem to be another set of tracks?

_ Oh no. _

She ran one hundred and fifty paces to the left, around the blind lip of a dense protrusion of trees. Another set of skiff landing tracks cut through the loose, dry dirt at the edge of the Whispering Woods. They had been tracked and followed.

And if the craft had already gone, if hers and Catra’s was still here.

Whoever had tracked them had gotten what they’d come for, and Catra hadn’t been able to leave yet.

_ Unless Catra had been what they were after _ .

Adora darted through the mouth of the woods - a trail had been hacked through the dense brush, and one of the trees along the outside had been carved.

_ HJD was here. _

The Horde Justice Division had been here, and now they had Catra.

“Swift Wind!” Adora shouted ferociously, racing back to the other, abandoned skiff. “Get back to Bright Moon, I’m taking the last skiff into the Fright Zone, Catra’s been captured!”

A shadowy streak bolted against the cloudlines, and she knew the steed was making a beeline back toward the castle. If the Horde had Catra she needed to move before she was exiled, or worse… executed. 

She keyed the skiff’s ignition and spun it around as it rose to the air, punching the route across the Valley of the Dead she’d created as She-Ra, a straight line to the center of the Fright Zone, and the prison Catra would no doubt be in. 

Within minutes the skiff had skimmed deep into the gulch She-Ra had carved pushing invaders back all along the borders of the woods. She stared down at the rotten corpses of the soldiers she and the Rebels had slaughtered. It didn’t get any easier having her memories back.

In fact, knowing all of what she did had made her feel more conflicted. 

Sure, the Horde was doing terrible things to people, but finding her way into the incredible kind of power she did shouldn’t have meant she had to wipe out entire squadrons of soldiers, right? Sure, having this much power might have meant she needed to protect the innocent and defend the world, but did that protection necessarily go with the bloodbath she’d exacted that first day in Thaymour?

If her old training had been anything to go off, the answer was yes. That killing and destruction were necessary means to the end of bringing lasting peace and order to the planet, that the complete annihilation of the old order was the only way to usher in a new, beautiful age. But how could that be the truth? If the Horde could bombard innocent civilian towns, poison entire kingdoms to starve their people to submission, willingly subject its soldiers to mind wipes… How could any of those lessons be trusted?

No, Adora should never have killed any of those soldiers - it wasn’t their fault they did the terrible things they’d done. The blame lay with Hordak, with Shadow Weaver, with every single hand pulling the strings on their puppets, the warriors.

She was as guilty as them, she realized.

Cutting the strings didn’t stop Hordak, it only meant the graves his lackeys dug now had to hold an extra body. She had given up every moment she could have spent trying to save someone to do what, exactly? Play sleepovers and make believe there was a normal life in store for her when she wasn’t fighting the war? Run around on humanitarian missions like she wasn’t a trained soldier, a war beast? She’d sacrificed harnessing her incredible power to end the war and bring the planet to peace and balance in the name of friendship?

And she was doing it again, going back for Catra, wasn’t she?

Choosing… feelings over her responsibility to use power wisely? 

The rotten corpses whizzed past her, the fierce wind whipped through her hair. The stench of death began to fade as she passed the valley of bodies she’d left behind, months and months ago. 

She had promised to save Catra, she had to make good on that. But after she got Catra out of the Fright Zone the best thing she could do for the girl was probably staying far, far away from her. She had to save the planet, Bow and Glimmer were right. She wouldn’t let Catra be taken prisoner and sent away, but that didn’t mean after making sure she could escape that she had to keep the girl in her shadow.

No, Catra would be better off far away from Adora after she set her free, no matter what she would have wanted. She was a murderer now, someone who couldn’t control themselves, someone who was fighting the wrong people in this war.

She had to set Catra free and get her on the first transport out of here. And then she had to find Hordak and stop this twisted experiment of his. Even if all she wanted was to get on the skiff with Catra and leave everything behind.

The Fright Zoone loomed at the edge of the horizon. The dark orange glow of the ground and the sickly green glow of the sprawling military infrastructure seemed muted; even here the sky seemed to drink up all the light, save for what it spat back in twisting bolts of lightning that lashed the ground, and the sputtering roar of the sparks and flames. 

She reached for her radio. This would be a gamble, one she had to hope would work.

“This is Force Captain Adora. Someone, anyone respond - over.”

“Force Captain, you’ve been listed as a deserter, have you come to surrender yourself for court martial? Over.” 

“Negative,” she began, taking a breath. “I’ve been in the field pursuing a lead - I found a valuable piece of technology and am returning it to the Fright Zone for use in the war effort. Please stand by to receive me at hangar Delta-two-niner - over.”

“Acknoledged, Force Captain. You will surrender the technology in bay eleven and debrief with Force Captain and DJD Director Scorpia - over.”

It was a trap. Scorpia had been hunting her and Catra. They were going to take her in, and they thought they’d outsmarted her. 

“Acknowledged - over.” Adora hummed to herself, cutting the feed as she experly weaved her skiff between the skyscrapers. She’d entered the Fright Zone now.

She’d have to neutralize her welcoming party and get to Scorpia fast if she wanted to know where Catra was. She just hoped the girl would be able to stay still long enough for her to rescue her.

* * *

Catra paced the length of her cell furiously, and her eyes stung with bitter tears she refused to let fall. She had trusted Shadow Weaver. Voluntarily.

And she’d been abandoned again. She glared at the broken shackles that had, moments ago, held the witch herself.

_ Maybe it had been a mistake? _

Some part of her offered the feeble excuse, although the possibility seemed vanishingly unlikely. Catra scowled, thumped her fist against her thigh, scratched at her arms, paced more vigorously. She was stupid, of course it hadn’t been a mistake. Shadow Weaver never made mistakes, not once. The witch was as exacting as the icy cut of a scalpel, as deliberate and calculated as any bot calculating a firing solution, steadfast as the unrelenting steamroll of tanks. No, the witch hadn’t  _ accidentally  _ left Catra behind. It was a calculated move. She’d always seen Catra as a nuisance, a burden. That wouldn’t just change because she’d briefly tended to the dark sorceress while they shared a cell.

No, Shadow Weaver was conniving, slippery and oily. She was selfish, manipulative, and always one step ahead. She had never cared for anything but herself; she’d been every bit the fool that witch always said she was to have assumed things would have been any different this time. Just because they’d been locked in a cell together and the old hag was half dying from withdrawals didn’t mean anything. Catra had been stupid and lonely and hopeful and gullible and childish and -

Adora was wrong. People were never kind without wanting something else. Not to her. 

There was no other rational explanation for why she kept getting screwed over, left high and dry. 

Octavia stirred.

Catra tensed, waiting for the Force Captain to rise.

The woman heaved a sigh, still unconscious, and Catra’s breath tumbled out of her lips in a heap.

Had she been holding her breath? She hadn’t noticed.

More guards would be here soon, at the next shift change or before. If she wanted to escape herself, that would be the only possible time to do so. Otherwise…

She shuddered at the thought, it would be better for her to escape sooner rather than wait and find what tortures Hordak could come up with for allowing his former Second in Command, who no doubt had vital knowledge about the Horde and its operations, to escape. She’d heard less than glowing reviews about the hospitality of the Northern Reach labor camps, and she’d been raised on the threat of Beast Island. Neither of which bode well for her.

Once the Force Captain woke up, any possibility of seeming like a victim of Shadow Weaver’s escape attempt instead of an active participant would be lost. No, if she was going to escape, she’d have to do so when the guards came in for Octavia.

Maybe if she could get her hands on a decent disguise before she left she’d even be able to stop at the medical bay for essentials and some field rations before she left too, that could give her some options. She would need to grab a skiff, and go as far as the thing could take her, disappear and never stop running. 

Footsteps across the hallway grew louder, and Catra’s ears pricked up at the sound. The guards were coming for shift change, it was now or never.

She slumped against the ground, feigning unconsciousness across the room from Octavia.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you guys for reading! As always please keep leaving kudos, comments, and bookmarks! This chapter was unbetaed and a bit rushed, so if you notice anything I should fix, feel free to tell me! Thank you all, again for all the support and feedback and I hope you have amazing rests of the day!!!!

**Author's Note:**

> Please keep leaving feedback and kudos!!! I live for it lmao! Also, my discord server for She-Ra and writing is up! Join now https://discord.gg/8wUXTTdAmf


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